If you've flipped through a fashion magazine in the past decade, you've likely seen Juergen Teller's work. Aside from shooting fashion editorials, Teller has been the sole lensman for Marc Jacobs' advertising campaigns for the past eleven years. Early ads featuring Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon playing onstage and a topless Sofia Coppola wading in a pool, to more recent campaigns starring fellow photographer Cindy Sherman in costume and doing her schtick, Dakota Fanning all gussied up and adult-like, and Victoria Beckham's stick-figure legs poking out of a Marc Jacobs shopping bag, were all shot by the German photographer and feature his signature washed-out lighting and spare, naturalistic surroundings. Marc Jacobs Advertising 1998-2009 by Juergen Teller, a survey of the pair's eleven year collaboration and compilation of all the ads was published by Steidl and retails for $120.
Lehmann Maupin Gallery currently has on view Paradis, a series of large-scale photographs taken by Teller for the French magazine Paradis. Featuring Brazilian fashion model Raquel Zimmermann and British actress Charlotte Rampling (a longtime friend of Teller's who also starred alongside the photographer in a Marc Jacobs' ad campaign several seasons back) completely nude with little to no make-up posing amongst the masterworks in the Musee du Louvre. As the show's press release states, "Shot alone one evening at the Musee du Louvre in Paris, this nude study... captures the intimacy between photographer and subject... Teller removes the artifice between photographer and subject, leaving only the purity of each image, and unlike the sculptures in the museum's collection, his photographs do not present a standard of beauty but are more akin to a tribute to women and the human form."
While I ordinarily love Teller's fashion work, and his oftentimes quirky self-portraits, as well as many of his other nude portraits, this show left me wanting more. I like the idea of presenting the two female nudes next to the classic sculptures and beside Leonardo's Mona Lisa (see my pic below), but their sullen faces and wooden poses seemed awkward and cold. And while I appreciate Teller's use of two models from different ends of the age spectrum (Zimmermann is 26 and Rampling is 63), the fact that both women look much better naked and sans make-up than your average, everyday woman makes me doubt his intended "tribute to women and the human form" includes all women. You have until October 17th to judge for yourself at Lehmann Maupin. Also, these photographs will appear in a limited-edition, leather-bound book available at the end of September. Learn more at Lehmannmaupin.com and read a Q&A with Teller at Themoment.blogs.nytimes.com.
Paradis, 2009
Paradis, 2009
Paradis, 2009
Comments