

"You know that most photographers die on a shoot? Helmut Newton died on assignment. "I spend, maximum, four or five days in a place at a time, except for my holidays," he says. I can't get enough of it." Does he never feel the impulse to idle away a day in his slippers and pyjamas? Apparently not.

Every day a new city, new people, new everything. If you're imprudent enough to suggest that his nonstop schedule sounds like hell, Testino will cut you short. "I work most Saturdays and most Sundays." "I work 14 hours a day, every day," he says. Which, of course, is where he spends much of his waking life. It's as if he can't help treating the shoot as if he was the one behind the camera. When we photograph him, he is at once the master of ceremonies. From the moment the world's busiest fashion and portrait photographer bounds into the hotel he is all grace and charm.

I f Mario Testino, who jetted into Los Angeles from London barely 12 hours earlier, would rather be some place else, such as his gorgeous 1933 Spanish-style hacienda in the Hollywood hills, he doesn't betray it.
