“We are obsessed with the tensions between male and female, repulsion and attraction, the beautiful and the grotesque, the mundane and the spiritual. The power game of androgyny has always fascinated us.” (Inez and Vinoodh)
Known for their iconic images, Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin (a husband-and-wife team, just in case you didn’t know), have defied genres for two decades with their radical mix of subversive portraiture and fashion imagery, masterfully navigating between the absurd, the beautiful and the surreal, presenting a twisted take on glamour which constantly transgresses the boundaries of contemporary image making. They also have a slight proclivity for revealing their subjects in the buff, and a passion for referencing anything Gothic, androgynous and erotic.
Fluttering between sharp and simple portraiture, graphic visual compositions, and avant-garde fashion editorials (V, i-D, Vogue Paris, the New York Times Magazine), and campaigns for Balenciaga, YSL and Viktor & Rolf, the duo have now released Pretty Much Everything, a 666-page tome full of their most lauded images, capturing some of the most celebrated faces of our time, including Julianne Moore, Marc Jacobs, Bjork, Kate Moss, Penelope Cruz, Natalie Portman, Clint Eastwood and the late Heath Ledger, all inside two stunningly beautiful volumes (forget coffee-table look good, we’re talking shelf all of its own!). With artistic direction by longtime collaborators M/M, the limited edition (only 1000 copies available), is produced by Taschen and includes an original silkscreened poster origami-folded over the top corner of the slipcase. It’s also available in two exclusive Art Editions, featuring two signed and numbered prints. Contributing authors include Penny Martin, Editor-in-Chief of The Gentlewoman and Chair of Fashion Imagery at The London College of Fashion, Michael Bracewell, a cultural historian, and novelist, and Olivier Zahm, founder and co-editor of Purple magazine and also an acclaimed art curator and fashion theorist.
Inez and Vinoodh’s Pretty Much Everything is out now (Taschen, £450 RRP), and if Santa doesn’t leave one in my XXL Christmas stocking, I’ll be having words with those pesky elves.
