A double-dose of Juergen today: first a profile and discussion of his W Magazine fashion shoot in New York Magazine, and second, the pictures and parse in W itself.
It's a bit confusing, I admit. We'll do it by numbers:
1. New York Magazine piece (accompanied by the cutest JT picture I've seen yet)
"Juergen Teller, the photographer, has spent much of this summer Tuesday editing a shoot commissioned by W Magazine about the art world in New York. The star of the shoot is the 47-year-old actress Tilda Swinton, who has been dressed up as everyone from an artist to a gallerist to an insecure collector mid-Botox procedure. She's accompanied by artists like Rachel Feinstein and collectors like Renée Rockefeller. The whole thing looks fairly dark; the lighting is not gentle or flattering, and if any of the subjects has a pore, or a sagging breast, well, there it is.
'Most fashion photography is done by gay people finding women sexy,' Teller says, 'which is sort of not sexy at all, at least to a heterosexual man. She's so retouched, so airbrushed, without any human response at all, and, well, you don't really want to fuck a doll.' "
2. The W fashion piece; Tilda Swinton, Rachel Feinstein, Heather Mnuchin, Renee Rockefeller, Yvonne Force Villareal and more of W's favorite fashion icons slip into fall's best looks.
"Looking one moment like a Park Avenue matron and the next like a punked-out artist, Tilda Swinton is doing what she commonly does when she alights in a city from her home in the Scottish Highlands: gallery hopping.
But on this particular weekend in New York's Chelsea, she is portraying an assortment of über New York women for photographer Juergen Teller. Inside Barbara Gladstone's gallery, wearing seven-inch stilettos and a silk miniskirt, she gets down on the floor and raises herself into a shoulder stand, jackknifing her legs so that they dangle precipitously. At Andrea Rosen, her 5-foot-11-inch frame skyrocketing another 10 inches atop platform wedges, she pokes her head between the hairy legs of one of David Altmejd's colossal sculptures of giants."
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OK, UM... hmmm. You know, I just don't see these pictures and think "oooh, let me pick up Fendi's 24k gold-infused mink jacket (in the picture on the left) or ooh, I must have Ralph Lauren Black Label's lambskin pants" (in the picture on the right).
I mostly just think: "good god, these are some ugly and unfortunate images. What a waste of a good Tilda."
I think Juergen may have finally gone too far. Am I wrong?
It's a bit confusing, I admit. We'll do it by numbers:
1. New York Magazine piece (accompanied by the cutest JT picture I've seen yet)
"Juergen Teller, the photographer, has spent much of this summer Tuesday editing a shoot commissioned by W Magazine about the art world in New York. The star of the shoot is the 47-year-old actress Tilda Swinton, who has been dressed up as everyone from an artist to a gallerist to an insecure collector mid-Botox procedure. She's accompanied by artists like Rachel Feinstein and collectors like Renée Rockefeller. The whole thing looks fairly dark; the lighting is not gentle or flattering, and if any of the subjects has a pore, or a sagging breast, well, there it is.
'Most fashion photography is done by gay people finding women sexy,' Teller says, 'which is sort of not sexy at all, at least to a heterosexual man. She's so retouched, so airbrushed, without any human response at all, and, well, you don't really want to fuck a doll.' "
2. The W fashion piece; Tilda Swinton, Rachel Feinstein, Heather Mnuchin, Renee Rockefeller, Yvonne Force Villareal and more of W's favorite fashion icons slip into fall's best looks.
"Looking one moment like a Park Avenue matron and the next like a punked-out artist, Tilda Swinton is doing what she commonly does when she alights in a city from her home in the Scottish Highlands: gallery hopping.
But on this particular weekend in New York's Chelsea, she is portraying an assortment of über New York women for photographer Juergen Teller. Inside Barbara Gladstone's gallery, wearing seven-inch stilettos and a silk miniskirt, she gets down on the floor and raises herself into a shoulder stand, jackknifing her legs so that they dangle precipitously. At Andrea Rosen, her 5-foot-11-inch frame skyrocketing another 10 inches atop platform wedges, she pokes her head between the hairy legs of one of David Altmejd's colossal sculptures of giants."
__
OK, UM... hmmm. You know, I just don't see these pictures and think "oooh, let me pick up Fendi's 24k gold-infused mink jacket (in the picture on the left) or ooh, I must have Ralph Lauren Black Label's lambskin pants" (in the picture on the right).
I mostly just think: "good god, these are some ugly and unfortunate images. What a waste of a good Tilda."
I think Juergen may have finally gone too far. Am I wrong?
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The whole lo-fi movement is far beyond me. I feel Jurgen went too far too long ago.
I just don't see any beauty or anything interesting in this style of work. It amazes me there is a market willing to hire and pay someone to shoot like this. I'd be looking at the delete button had I shot any of these images.
ITSME!!!
Overall I look at these and I think, "someone had a crappy point-n-shoot" These photos don't do anything for me other that wastes the awesomeness of Tilda.
I'm not sure how effective these images are as far as making people buy this stuff, but I think as a concept they are quite effective. They look to me as tongue-in-cheek snaps of crazy celebrities caught in the "wrong" moment. I say crazy, cause the characters all look seriously out of touch, maybe even out of place. It looks to me like a well styled satire.
The fact it's a well known actress and not just a pretty model playing ugly, all in a well respected magazine adds more to the farce of it all.
Offensive? Not to Tilda, I don't think.
I guess I just find some of them enjoyable as images :)
Work like this (which has been around a long time, Terry Richardson is just one of the more famous examples) is to me the photographic equivalent of a Pollack painting. If you didn't know it was by somebody famous and important, you'd think it was done by a six-year-old who had stolen his mother's camera. It's a big scam by alleged "artists," or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, it's the result of what happens when they start believing their own hype.
M
Whether one finds the work beautiful or not, Juergen is definitely one of the main proponents of this style and someone obviously likes it because I'm sure he doesn't work for cheapskates. It's definitely a trademark style that one can easily identify and that's probably more of a selling point than anything. What separates JT from TR is that the former makes (relatively) better use of environments and is less about overt sexuality.
Had W hired McDean or Klein, the results wouldn't be as discussion worthy, imo. They'd be probably be pretty and well produced, but it'd be just any ol' fashion editorial.
Plain and simple, this is garbage that passes itself as art.
What's the difference in this so-called 'artistic' concept and a 5 year old with an instamatic camera?