Juergen Teller: Woo at ICA in London

Last Wednesday, the 23rd of January 2013, the new exhibition Woo featuring photographer Juergen Teller's work opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. 

Kate Moss by Juergen Teller

Teller's photography has penetrated both the art and the commercial world. You probably have come across his work in glossy magazines. He has been the photographer for the campaigns  of celine and marc jacobs. The last for which he has shot the iconic campaigns for at least the last 14 years.  

Celine Fall-Winter 2010-11

Celine Fall-Winter 2012-13

Teller's style is very distinctive, and you could label it very honest and fragile. His photos are almost always harshly lit and almost never retouched. So the images are not always the most flattering for the models in them, but this makes them more approachable and even more likeable, a tactic that is not often used in fashion photography. 

His distinctive sytle was developed in the early 90s in collaboration with stylist Venetia Scott - his then partner. The two of them spearheaded a movement that challenged the world's preconceptions of fashion photography throughout the 1990s. Their use of down-at-heel locations (often their own homes), idiosyncratic models and insistence upon creating a narrative that appeared to go beyond simply "showing the clothes", was in direct opposition to the status-driven aesthetic of the Eighties. Call it grunge, real-life photography or – most infamously – heroin chic. None of these labels are valid or do their work justice. More than any other of the school's main protagonists – David Sims, Corinne Day, Nigel Shafran among them – Teller turned this approach into an art form cfr. (1)

Elle Fanning for Marc by Marc Jacobs 2011

Sofia Coppola for Marc Jacobs Perfume

While the pictures may look spontaneous, they are far from it. For the Jacobs campaign Teller may work with a skeletal team – often just with his subject and without the elsewhere-requisite hair and make-up and aforementioned art director, creative director, CEO and so forth. He also has enough faith in his ability to produce an end result to create an environment in which a story is allowed, organically, to unfold. But there is always a story – generally a romantic story or "fairytale" as Teller describes it. These are rather more than mere snapshots, then, even though, on at least some occasions, their appeal lies in the fact that they may, at first glance and to the more naïve onlooker, look that way. At least part of the reason for this is that Teller is pretty much alone in the industry in that his work is only very rarely – if ever – retouched. cfr. (1)

In the end the calibre of the lead character each season – be she or he an actor, musician, artist, photographer, film-maker – is such that we could all be forgiven for wanting to be them. And that, in the end, is precisely the point. The casting of these images is certainly amongst the most significant things about them and, given the strict adherence to youth and beauty that fashion photography for the most part subscribes to, it is also ground-breaking. cfr. (1)

But the exhibition at the ICA is not only about his commercial work. It also showcases Teller's non-commercial photography where themes such as family, history, nationhood take center stage and this seems to mark a big divide between that and his fashion work. cfr (2) 'Irene im Wald' and 'Keys to the House' are Teller’s most recent bodies of work, revealing the photographer’s more personal world in his hometown in Germany and family home in Suffolk. cfr (3) Teller was inspired to photograph the woods where he grew up after turning his lens on the Suffolk landscape a few years ago, where he and his art-dealer wife, Sadie Coles, with his two children Lola and Ed, rent a country house. "I had been going back to Germany and photographing the environment that is close to my childhood but I could never photograph the forest for some reason. Somehow, these landscape pictures in Suffolk opened up the trees in Germany for me." cfr (4)

From 'Irene im Wald' by Juergen Teller

The exhibition at the ICA is free, and it is really a gem that you should go see as it brings together his two kinds of photography, one with more glamorous subjects than the other, but both equally real. 

Kate Moss by Juergen Teller

For this article I am referring to he many articles that have been written about the artist, here are the links to the most entertaining ones:
There is also a link to a video reportage on the artist

(1) Article in the Independent of 30th of June 2009, 

Juergen Teller: Fashion's provocative photographer reveals all

(2) Article in the Guardian of 6th of January 2013

Juergen Teller: fame laid bare

(3) Exhibition Review on ICA website

Juergen Teller Woo

(4) Article in the Independent of 12th of January 2013

Photography: Juergen Teller's on the right path with new show
(5) A video of Juergen Teller on Nowness magazine
Juergen Teller Exposed