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LELE DEL FABBRO

@leledelfabbro

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Creative Director | LDF_Studio
@ldf_studio

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The visual landscape of late 1970s and 1980s New York, captured with remarkable intimacy in Jamel Shabazz’s foundational street portraits, documents a generation transforming everyday life into a language of identity, style, and belonging. Across Brooklyn, Harlem, and Queens, early hip-hop emerged not as a manufactured commercial movement, but as the organic continuation of Black expressive traditions shaped by migration, community, and everyday life.
Diaspora is often understood as the movement of people across national boundaries. Within visual culture, however, it also describes how identities are continuously reshaped through migration, memory, and cultural exchange. Rather than remaining fixed, identity exists as an ongoing negotiation between inherited histories and new social realities.
Back in the Days offers a powerful reflection of this process. Documenting hip-hop before its commercialisation, the photographs portray neighbourhoods marked by decades of urban neglect that nevertheless became vibrant cultural centres for communities from Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Rather than focusing on hardship alone, Shabazz reveals the social, creative, and emotional vitality that flourished within these environments.
Within this landscape, presence and style became a precise, non-verbal grammar of identity, pride, and belonging. By blending African American, Caribbean, and Latin American traditions with the visual codes of the city, young people rejected fixed cultural identities in favour of a hybrid visual language. Caps, Cazal frames, tracksuits, Adidas sneakers, and heavy gold chains became more than fashion, they were symbols through which visibility, community, and cultural confidence were publicly claimed.

[Caption continued in comments]

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365 Artists is a visual research project by LDF Studio. A constantly evolving series across photography, cinema, video, and visual arts united by a shared sensitivity and way of seeing. A constellation of voices shaping our cultural landscape. This is what feeds our imagination: what we observe, study, and carry into our practice. A glimpse into our process. One artist a day, for a year.

“International fashion photographer and artist, Daniele Duella’s style is often described as iconic. His sculptural aesthetic inspired by the italian renaissance and graphic precision has branded many magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, W Magazine, Interview, V Magazine, Visionaire, Dazed & Confused… and record number of celebrity and supermodel covers for the legendary British magazine i-D. He has worked on commercial campaigns with the most famous brands of the industry such as Givenchy, Tom Ford, Versace, Cartier, John Frieda.Daniele’s new form of classicism is surprisingly modern and provocative. His extraordinary energy and precision has brought him to experience different arts and industries. He regularly exhibits his works in galleries in Paris, at the International Photography Festival “Les Rencontres d’Arles” and in Nyc. His notorious perfectionism and attention to detail naturally brought him to experience his talents as a scenographer and as a light director for Theatre. Next step: Cinema. “ - extract from Special Advertising Supplement to the New York Times (@nytimes)

All image credits belong to:
Daniele Duella @danieleduella

Slide 2 & 4: Kate TV @__katemoss @katemossagency
Slide 3: The Madonna Hip- Hop
Slide 5: Ron Arad Spring Collection @ronaradstudio
Slide 6: Riccardo Tisci for Coccapani @riccardotisci17

@leledelfabbro
#leledelfabbro
#ldfstudio
#365project

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The defining crisis of modern American life is the total commodification of human identity, where every aspect of existence our worth, bodies, status, and our youth has been converted into a public transaction. Our values and behaviors are affected by structures shaped by the processes of getting currency, and getting power: whether it’s Hollywood, addiction, materialism, politics, or the realm of social media. Wealth and luxury are no longer sought for comfort, but serve as existential proof which oscillates between fantasy and reality, creating a cycle that leads to cultural degeneration.

An action doesn’t merely follow feeling; action and feeling go together. This market logic deeply infects personal identity: Lauren Greenfield’s lens (@greenfield_lauren ) visually mirrors how market forces sanitize and package extreme behavior to make it look glamorous and even normal, even when the underlying reality is precarious or absurd. The traditional American Dream has devolved into a culture of kayfabe, where faking privilege outweighs having substance. Cosmetic alterations, chronic dieting, and body dysmorphia are logical responses to a system that demands especially women to objectify themselves for social survival.

Today, the same status-driven anxiety is targeting youth through digital platforms and lucrative marketing: social media algorithms amplify insecurities at scale, forcing them to curate their feeds and chase metrics before they could develop a solid self concept to move forward with. Young people are more and more subject and vulnerable to public brands inside algorithmic echo chambers designed to profit off and exploit their insecurities all while conditioning them to measure their identity through peer validation. Ultimately, when self-worth, appearance, and ambition are treated like assets, true human connection and trust breaks down. The deepest danger isn’t just collective burnout it is that people completely lose track of who they are when no one is watching.

@leledelfabbro
#leledelfabbro
#ldfstudio
#researchleddesign
#laurengreenfield
#creativedirection

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WHAT WE READ, collect and return to are a selection of books, magazines and printed matter which become tools for our research, thinking and shaping new visual languages. Here are a selection of publications from our Studio bookshelves we have been looking at recently:

1- Deller, Jeremy. Iggy Pop Life Class. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum / London: HENI Publishing, 2016.

Conceived by artist Jeremy Deller, Iggy Pop Life Class documents a performative project where rock legend Iggy Pop posed nude for a diverse group of 22 New York artists. The core idea was to strip away his wildly dynamic stage persona and examine his heavily weathered body through life drawings. The catalogue expands on this visual study by gathering all the artwork, behind-the-scenes photographs, essays, and an interview with Pop himself about the experience.

2- Campolmi, Irene, ed. Jesper Just: Servitudes. Circuits. Interpassivities. Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2019.

Jesper Just: Servitudes. Circuits. Interpassivities. explores the core theme of how human bodies, agency, and technology interact within architectural and exhibition spaces.

3- Varadinis, Mirjam, and Solveig Øvstebø, eds. Rosa Barba: Time as Perspective. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2013

Rosa Barba: Time as Perspective documents a major two-chapter exhibition (held at Kunsthaus Zürich and Bergen Kunsthall) revolving around the relationship between geology, time, industrial machinery, and the medium of film. The focal point is Barba’s 35mm film shot in the Texan desert. It captures giant pumpjacks drilling into the earth, framing them as mechanical sculptures.

4- Sherman, Cindy. Cindy Sherman: Centerfolds. Texts by Lisa Phillips, Peter Schjeldahl, Roberta Smith, and Andy Grundberg. New York: Skarstedt Fine Art, 2003.

The 2003 publication documents Sherman’s famous, controversial 1981 series of twelve wide, horizontal self-portraits modeled after magazine foldouts. By employing a panoramic format, Sherman forced viewers into the uncomfortable role of an intrusive voyeur intruding upon private, ambiguous moments.

@leledelfabbro
#ldfstudio
#booksbooksbooks
#researchleddesign
#leledelfabbro

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Every cultural shift begins within a community. At its most authentic, cinema has the ability to preserve its earliest traces, long before the rest of the world recognises their significance. Kids is one of those traces.

More than thirty years after its release, the Kids (1995) remains a remarkable record of a subculture at the precise moment it was redefining its own language. It does not simply portray a generation. It observes a community shaping its identity through skateboarding, the street, music, bodies, language and the rituals of everyday life.

Early 1990s New York is more than a backdrop. It is a cultural ecosystem in transformation, where every gesture, every encounter and every space contributes to the emergence of new codes. Many of today’s visual languages can be traced back to communities like this, often invisible while they are still generating cultural change. Rather than explaining this world, Larry Clark (@larryclarkofficial) allows it to unfold. His camera observes with unusual proximity, preserving the rhythm, tensions and vulnerabilities of a community without reducing it to a symbol or a manifesto. It is this approach that transforms Kids into something beyond cinema: not simply the portrait of a generation, but the archive of a cultural transition.

The film reminds us that culture rarely begins in institutions. It begins in small communities, on the margins, where new ways of living, communicating and imagining the world are first rehearsed. Only later do they become visible, recognisable and eventually absorbed into the mainstream.

This is where the value of cultural references truly lies. They do not exist to be replicated. They exist to be studied, questioned and reinterpreted, allowing ideas to move across generations while continuing to evolve. References are not meant to copy the past. They exist to give ideas a future.

@leledelfabbro
@larryclarkofficial
@harmonykorine
#leledelfabbro
#kids1995
#larryclark
#researchleddesign
#90s

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For this edition of What We Like, we are observing what Art Basel and it’s satellite events has brought together this year. One of the strongest threads moves through the idea of conviviality: the joy, tension and complexity of living together. This notion feels close to LDF. Our work often begins from the relationship between people, images, brands, spaces and communities. Not as separate elements, but as part of a wider cultural field. Starting from this perspective, we selected a series of events that felt closest to our vision. A personal reading of Art Basel through community, visual research, cultural dialogue, material tension and the possibility of creating new forms of connection.

Venues:

Art Basel at Messeplatz 10, 4058 Basel, Switzerland
Museum Tinguely @museumtinguely
Fondation Beyeler @fondationbeyeler
Liste Art Fair Basel, Messe Basel, Hall 1.1 Maulbeerstrasse / Riehenring 113, CH 4058 Basel @liste_art_fair_basel

Dates:

Art Basel: 16- 21 June
Liste Art Fair Basel: 15 - 21 June
Labouring Bodies exhibition at Museum Tinguely: 10 June- 8 November
Pierre Huyghe at Fondation Beyeler: 24 May - 13 September

Image Credits:

Cover: Gray Building during the day, 2019, Messeplatz, Basel Switzerland by Lisa Therese

2- Double Mushroom Vitrine (Forty-eightfold), 2021 by @carsten.holler, MASSIMODECARLO Gallery @massimodecarlogallery

3- Marcel Broodthaers, Pots Marilyn, 1966, painted wood, photo credits @peterfreemaninc

4- Eli Coplan, Sealed Air, 2022, LCD television and packing material, a.Squire, credits @asquire.ltd

5- Nairy Baghramian, Se ployant (gris de lin),2024, video credits @nairybaghramian

6- Theaster Gates, A libation in Uncertain Times, 2024, photo credits @whitecube

7- Julian Charriére, Thomas Bangalter, Rampa, 2026, video credits @nowness @artbasel

8- Mia Sanchez, Trenchcoat, 2020 / Leather Jacket,2020, photo credits @_miasanchezzzz_

9- Ernestina Orlowska, Make Your Body Your Machine, 2021, photo credits: Margot Roth from the Exhibition at Museum Tinguely

10- Pierre Huyghe at Fondation Beyeler, photo: URS FLUEELER

@leledelfabbro
@artbasel
#leledelfabbro
#ldfstudio
#artbasel26
#thisisbasel
#researchleddesign

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Everything begins with the way we look at the world.
At LDF, research is the way we enter reality. We observe culture, behaviour, images, language, objects, spaces and communities to understand what is changing, what is missing, and what is ready to emerge. From these signals, we build direction. Intuition becomes structure. Structure becomes visual systems, narratives and experiences that give brands a clearer role in culture. Our work moves between analysis and instinct, strategy and imagination, precision and emotion. From this tension, a system takes shape, one that connects ideas, people and culture, and gives meaning a visible form. Creative direction becomes a way to give shape to meaning, to make ideas visible, to bring people closer, and to create culture, community and presence around a point of view.

Video/photo credits: @leledelfabbro, LDF Studio and @danieleduella

#leledelfabbro
#creativedirection
#researchleddesign
#artdirection
#ldfstudio

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WHAT WE READ, collect and return to are a selection of books, magazines and printed matter which become tools for our research, thinking and shaping new visual languages.

Here are some publications we have been consulting more recently in the Studio:

1. i-D MAGAZINE MARCH 1999
Cover with Amber Valletta photographed by Richard Burbridge

@i_d
@ambervalletta
@richardburbridge

Koolhaas, R., & Bantal, S. (Eds.). (2020). Countryside, a report. Taschen.

@oma.eu

2. Borthwick, M., & Preston, A. (2014). Out of this world: On a journey with Mykita. Mykita GmbH.

@mark_borthwick
@mykitaofficial

3. Abramović, M., & Ulay. (2025). Ulay / Marina Abramović: Love. Hate. Forgiveness. (A. Bašić & A. Gregorič, Eds.). Walther König.

@abramovicinstitute

@leledelfabbro
#ldfstudio
#leledelfabbro
#researchleddesign
#booksbooksbooks

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HOW WE RESEARCH

A fast visual flow through fragments from our research archive. Images, references, moods, textures, gestures, errors, memories. A way of looking shaped through accumulation, instinct, editing and association.

At the centre, the human figure: its presence, its character, its ambiguity. A minimal and direct photographic language, where the image becomes a space of observation rather than spectacle.

Faces, bodies, postures and gestures become traces of identity, memory and tension. Research is a continuous movement between past and present, image and intuition, archive and possibility.

Theme: Body Language

@leledelfabbro
#leledelfabbro
#moodboard
#creativedirection
#ldfstudio
#researchleddesign

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WHAT WE LIKE is a simple edit of what we are into at LDF. Second edition: 61st Venice Art Biennale “In Minor Keys” at @labiennale curated by @madamekoyo along with some of our picks from the collateral exhibitions in Venice.

Here are a curated selection of events, exhibitions and perfomances in Venice that align with our vision we think are worth visiting:

Cover: Liquid Tongues by Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski at Giardini - Polish Pavilion, May 9th-November 22nd 2026 at Viale Giardini Pubblici
Curated by: @ewa.xom @wos.jola
Credit: @designboom

1. Björk performing at the Icelandic Pavilion, in support of Pocket Universe by @astafanney_art from May 9th- November 22nd at Castello 40B
Credit: @crackmagazine

2. Anish Kapoor at Palazzo Manfrin, from May 6th-8th of August 2026, at Palazzo Manfrin, Cannareggio, Venezia @dirty_corner
Credit: Attilio Maranzano @sanpoloartgallery

3. It Never Sst by Miet Warlop, Giardini-Belgian Pavilion, May 9th-November 22nd 2026 at Viale Giardini Pubblici
Credit: XUMbxl - YouTube

4. Seaworld Venice by Florentina Holzinger, Giardini-Austrian Pavilion, May 9th- November 22nd 2026 at Viale Giardini Pubblici
Credit: @klausbiesenbach

5. Helter Skelter by Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, Fondazione Prada from May 9th to November 23rd at Ca’ Corner della Regina
Credit: @fondazioneprada

6. Los Restos by Oriol Vilanova at Giardini Spanish Pavilion, May 9th-November 22nd 2026 at Viale Giardini Pubblici
Credit: Roberto Ruiz

7. Dreamers by Erwin Wurm, Museo Fortuny, May 6th-November 22nd 2026 at San Marco, Campo S. Beneto,3958 @palazzofortuny_venezia
Credit: @artribune

@leledelfabbro
#venicebiennale2026
#inminorkeys
#ldfstudio
#leledelfabbro
#researchleddesign

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What we read, collect and return to are a selection of books, magazines and printed matter which become tools for our research, thinking and shaping new visual languages.

1. No Wave by Marc Masters (2007) flashing through New York in the late 1970s, No Wave was the ultimate anti-movement. No Wave traces the history of a noisy and uncompromising genre, from its most famous names down to its many offshoots and sidetracks. From early pioneers like Suicide and Richard Hell, to forgotten treasures like Red Transistor and Bush Tetras, and descendants like ESG and Sonic Youth.

2. Kishin Shinoyama’s World (1970) the 20th of December issue of Playboy including various works by Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama.

3. Skema (1970) is a print publication based in Bologna which was known for it’s distinctive graphic design by Marco Caroli, it focused on topical issues featuring thematic monographs on photography,comics and social subjects of that time.

#ldfstudio
#leledelfabbro
@leledelfabbro
#researchleddesign
#bookreccomendations

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