Photographer Jurgen Teller. Life according to the principle “enjoy your life! Jurgen Teller's provocative photos Jurgen Teller photos

Alexey Nikishin continues talking about contemporary photography. Today we will focus on the work of fashion photographer Jurgen Teller.

Under the heading "Secrets of Success", renowned fashion photographer Jurgen Teller will tell you how by shooting worse than any Russian photographer you can succeed in photography and gain recognition as an authoritative contemporary artist.

Photo © Juergen Teller, 1998-1999

The paradox of Jurgen Teller's creativity is that, according to the majority Russian photographers, does not know how to shoot. "Amateur aesthetics" ("snapshot aesthetic"), in which Jurgen Teller works, does not inspire confidence in the Russian viewer, although many Western contemporary photographers have been working in it for a long time. But it would be strange to think that this is what made him a contemporary artist.

Jurgen Teller shot his first serious project at the age of 35, when during the year he photographed (although it would be more correct to say photo-documenting) all the girls who came to his studio, located on a small street in West London, to do model photo tests. Throughout the year (from 1998 to 1999), agencies send girls to him for photo tests, and Jurgen filmed each one on a soap dish at the door of his studio, like at the door in new life... Photographed and stacked photographs.

On September 1, 1999, the book “Jourgen Teller. Go-Sees ”- 470 pages of photographs of English girls who dreamed of a serious career as a super-model! 470 pages of unfulfilled hopes. A kind of sociological research, carried out in the form of a typology, which united all the participants in this spontaneous photo project together, as well as those false hopes that were the purpose of their visit to the photographer. It was this project that brought fame to the young Jurgen Teller and transferred him from the category of a model tests photographer to the category of "contemporary artist". The problems that this project managed to reveal, as you understand, are modern, relevant and so far from "model tests".

You guessed it, not all photographers are considered contemporary artists. For example, Terry Richardson is not a contemporary artist, although his style is strongly reminiscent of Jurgen Teller. Why? Because all the photos Terry takes about the same thing: either about friends-stars, or about Terry's dick. Although these are of course important topics, they are, to put it mildly, shallow for contemporary art.

Prominent examples of those who, like Jurgen Teller, have broken out of photographers into contemporary artists, are Pierre et Gilles, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin (Nan Goldin), Larry Clark, Thomas Demand, Rineke Dijkstra (Rineke Dijkstra), Ryan McGinley (Ryan McGinley), Boris Mikhailov (Boris Mikhailov), Hellen van Meene (Helen van Min), Wolfgang Tillmans (Wolfgang Tillmans), Gillian Wearing (Gillian Wearing) and others. We will talk about them in the following articles.

We continue the competition for the most interesting questions in contemporary photography. You send us your questions - we try to answer them or include them in the topics of our next articles.

Today the question is asked by Georgy, a photographer from the city of Stavropol, in southern Russia. He asks: "What is art here, [censored]?"

Write your answers and new questions in the comments.

You can find all the articles about contemporary photography here:

Today, under the heading "Uncle with a Camera", we have Jurgen Teller, a man who valiantly refused to photograph Miley Cyrus, and indeed, not without other virtues, a personality. Originally from Germany, he moved to London in the mid-80s, helped make Kate Moss famous and in between times snapped up a bunch of celebrities. Jurgen has a reputation as a provocateur, periodically strips his models naked, but he heard nothing about post-processing. To accusations of all sorts of mortal sins, he answers something like this - "everything human is deeply alien to me" and continues in the same spirit. Although Jurgen himself considers himself just a diligent photographer who tries to "do his job with high quality."

I am never focused on money, the most important thing is to do the job well. If you do some work, then it happens because you yourself want it. Everything is elementary. But if you work under a commercial contract, different rules apply!

For fans of psychoanalysis, we inform you: as a child, Jurgen loved to watch TV for a long time and idolized his older cousin, an amateur photographer. It is not known exactly how his passion for television influenced him, but with the elevation to the rank of saints of his brother-photographer, everything is quite clear. Teller also has great respect for Robert Mapplethorpe, William Egglestone and Boris Mikhailov.

Jurgen's career began with filming backstages at the Helmut Lang and Versace shows. After some time, Jurgen was already filming for famous magazines(Vogue, W Magazine, Purple, i-D). Teller's account advertising campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Celine, Moschino, Vivienne Westwood. Teller's camera lenses included such celebrities as Helen Mirren, Charlotte Rampling, Kurt Cobain, Yves Saint Laurent, Milla Jovovich, Cate Blanchett, the list goes on, if not indefinitely, then at least for a very long time.

I instantly feel a person, intuitively understand him. Then, I am a simple and open guy, and people, feeling this, quickly open up in response. I do not burden the person - stand up like this, look here, we often take breaks, chat, and at this time the best images are born. It really doesn't matter how long it takes, but, as a rule, the case does not drag out.

Ultimately, it depends on me who will look like - a wonderful person or a complete idiot.

In response to the offer to undress in front of "Mona Lisa" Rampling said: "Cool, this happens once in a lifetime."

There is an opinion that Teller removes trash. Of course, his photos are very different from what people are usually used to seeing in glossy magazines: Jurgen's works are uncomfortable; in them, celebrities licked with Photoshop usually look like ordinary people. In fact, in most cases, it turns out that looking at them this way is even more interesting. At the same time, one cannot say that Teller feels like some desperate truth-teller, a fighter against soulless gloss and an anarchist from the fashion world. He's just trying to do his job well. It just so happens that he is more concerned with the side of people that, as a rule, remains behind the scenes.

It doesn't matter how much time I spend - five minutes or a month. Until my soul and my lens are inside a person, I cannot do my job.

Several years ago, an exhibition of Teller's works was held in Moscow. In honor of such an event, Jurgen visited Russia and even managed to hold something like a master class, during which he noticed that the Russians "want everything at once, and I just tell my tiny stories."

You Russians shouldn't take yourself so seriously. It is helpful to look at yourself with irony at least sometimes. A sense of humor in creativity is necessary, because, damn it, life is so terribly boring.

The core of the exposition will be a video recording of the matches of the German national team at the 2018 Championship - more precisely, how the photographer reacts to them. Depending on the outcome, the atmosphere of these broadcasts will be upbeat or overwhelmed. The exhibition will feature pictures of famous football players of the past and present, as well as the work of the photographer, taken in different parts of the world. They are not related to football, but give an idea of Teller's way of thinking and his relationship with nature, animals, people and the world in general.

The characteristics of Teller's photography are not easy to identify: almost every series of his is a deliberate risk and a rejection of generally accepted ideals of beauty. At the same time, Teller's works are often based on humor and episodes from his private life. The photographer's family and his immediate entourage act as key actors... The exhibition will reveal all the possible approaches of Teller to photographic creation and will acquaint the Russian viewer with the position of the involved observer, characteristic of the photographer.

The semantic center of the exhibition is the famous, extremely provocative, both in form and in content, a snapshot where a completely naked Teller stands with a bottle of beer and a soccer ball at his father's grave. The trauma of family history turns out to be inseparable from football: the photographer's father, a headstrong and cruel man, did not like the game. At the exhibition, you can see fragments of the famous Siegerflieger series (2014), named after the aircraft on which the German national football team flies. The photographer follows the footballers along with his friends and family, and at the end merges with the Berlin crowd celebrating their team's victory in the 2014 World Cup, capturing an ecstatic state of euphoria. Teller's earlier series, Naked on the Football Field (2002), is devoted, on the contrary, to disappointment: in the 2002 World Cup Germany lost to Brazil in second place.

The exhibition is organized by Keith Fowle, Garage's chief curator, with the participation of Museum curators Valentin Dyakonov and Andrei Misiano.

More details

Jurgen Teller "Mandrage on the couch"

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jurgen Teller

Jurgen Teller (born 1964, Erlangen, Germany) is one of the most important photographers of his generation. Before moving to London in 1986, he studied at the Bavarian State School of Photography (Munich). Over the course of his 30-year career, Teller has successfully distinguished himself both in the field of art and in the field of commercial photography, blurring the line between custom work and his own projects.

In 2003, Teller became a laureate of the Citibank Prize for photography, and in 2007 he participated in an exhibition at the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He is the author of 41 photo albums, among his personal exhibitions - expositions in the Gallery of Photographers (London, 1998), Kunsthalle Vienna (2004), Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art (Paris, 2006), Daelim Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, 2011), Institute of Contemporary Art ( London, 2013), DESTE Foundation (Athens 2014), Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery (Berlin, 2015), Phillips Auction House (London, 2015), Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2016), Blum & Poe Gallery (Tokyo, 2017) and Palace of Arts ( Erlangen, 2017). Teller is currently Professor of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts (Nuremberg).

TICKETS

Dear visitors! Please note that Jurgen Teller's exhibition Mandrage on the Sofa is intended for visitors over 18 years old. An entrance ticket to it can be purchased only at the Museum's ticket office upon presentation of an identity card.

Gallery

Photo: Ivan Erofeev

Exhibition by Jurgen Teller "Mandrage on the Sofa" at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Moscow, 2018
Photo: Ivan Erofeev
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Jurgen Teller. Siegerflieger No. 166
2014 Juergen Teller, All Rights Reserved

Jurgen Teller. Pele and me. London, 2003
2003 Juergen Teller, All Rights Reserved

Jurgen Teller
Student residence, No. 3. Munich, Germany. 2014
2014 Juergen Teller. All rights reserved

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has opened an exhibition by photographer Jurgen Teller "Mandrage on the Sofa" (yes, timed to coincide with the FIFA World Cup, which Russia is hosting this year). Teller does work that goes beyond the concept of beauty and ugliness. At the same time, he is one of the most famous fashion photographers, whose photographs for advertising campaigns for the brands Marc Jacobs and Céline are fully consistent with the principles of impassivity of his personal aesthetics. Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov documented the fall of the Soviet Union. In his ruthless series "Case history", he portrayed a brutal and brutal image of the poverty-stricken post-Soviet society and its new martyrs. Teller and Mikhailov have always admired each other's work and talked with pleasure. The two great photographers and Mikhailov's wife Victoria met at Teller's London home.

Fragment of the exhibition "Mandrage on the Sofa" by Jurgen Teller at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Moscow, 2018.Photo: Ivan Erofeev. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Boris Mikhailov: What is it? How did it happen? (Mikhailov flips through Teller's album, his attention is drawn to a photograph of a tiger tamer from Las Vegas named Roy. Roy has huge nipples.)

Jurgen Teller: I think he enlarges them with a breast pump — you know, that kind of thing for nursing mothers. And here he has a tattoo.

B.M .: Great series. Very successful, very thoughtful.

01 Boris Mikhailov. Football. 2000. C-prints, aluminum composite panel. Courtesy by Boris Mikhailov / Barbara Weiss Gallery

Yu.T .: Do you know the German newspaper Die Zeit? I worked with them for almost a year. Once a week, they printed my new photo and a little text. Readers simply flooded the editorial office with letters. They all hated my photos! They wrote that they are terrible, and I myself am fixated on myself.

B.M .: Fantastic! The same reaction was to my work in the Soviet Union.

Yu.T .: At first, reading these reviews, I sank into a chair and thought: "Lord, am I such a bad person?" Then I got used to it.

B.M .: When you shoot, do you press on the model?

Yu.T .: Sometimes you have to push, and sometimes I am soft and shy.

B.M .: What is it?

Yu.T .: Contacts.

B.M .: Are you shooting on film?

Yu.T .: Yeah.

Boris Mikhailov. From the project “When my mother was young”. 2012-2013. The project was carried out in cooperation with the film crew of the film "Dow" using the artist's personal archive. Courtesy Sprovieri Gallery, London

B.M .: Is this an old Contax? Do you shoot only on it? (examines Teller's camera with interest)

Yu.T .: Yes, only for him. I don't work with numbers.

B.M .: For me, switching from tape to digital is easy ... I've never seen such a flash before.

Yu.T .: It's a really fast flash (takes a camera and starts taking pictures).

B.M .: Fantastic!

Yu.T .: That's why I like her.

B.M .: Do you get large-format photographs?

Yu.T .: Oh yes, very large ones.

B.M .: (pointing to the photo on the wall) Araki!

Yu.T .: I bought this. Great photographer!

B.M .: And I have a job by Lee Ledard! A very young boy and at the same time absolutely amazing! I made a project about my mother, about the last taboo of a modern person. The figure of the mother is considered inviolable and sacred, and he showed her as a woman and as a sexual object.

Yu.T .: Maybe we can take a couple of photos?

(Mikhailov puts the camera between his legs and pretends to masturbate the lens. Teller takes a picture of him. When everyone sits down to have lunch with pasta and seafood, Boris under the table photographs what is under Jurgen's shorts.)

B.M .: How did Ukraine seem to you when you first got into it for the first time?

Yu.T .: I was delighted. I immediately thought that Kiev is such a Moscow on "Prozac".

Left: Boris Mikhailov. Untitled. From the series "Case history". 1997-98. Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2011 Boris Mikhailov
Right: Boris Mikhailov. Untitled. From the "History of Illness" series. 1997-98. Berlin gallery. 2011 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

B.M .: What is Prozac?

Yu.T .: Prozac is such a sedative. Moscow is, of course, crazier.

B.M .: Yes, Kiev is a more relaxed city, but at the same time weirder. Once upon a time I did not like him. All the money flowed to Kiev, he was fattening, and the rest of Ukraine did not live so well. But in the late 80s, Kiev was badly damaged during the Chernobyl accident. Strange, but this did not affect the character of the people of Kiev, they remained as optimistic and cheerful people as before the accident. This circumstance reconciled me with this city.

Yu.T .: Trips to places like Ukraine have a refreshing effect on me. In Western Europe, Berlin or London, you are forced to live by rules that cannot be broken. Cameras are watching you everywhere. If you, for example, are driving, then, if something happens, they will immediately write you a fine and so on in everything. And in Ukraine, you can see a motorcycle sliding down the stairs or racing along the sidewalk. But it doesn't look dangerous. Although it still shocks me how much they drink there. In the morning, businessmen go to the stall and drink a glass of warm vodka.

V.M .: One can imagine what kind of things they do afterwards!

Yu.T .: I just flew in from New York yesterday. Filmed there for one magazine 32 film actors. Very tiring.

B.M .: Did you get a good shot?

Yu.T .: Hope.

B.M .: Haven't seen it yet?

Yu.T .: Not all. Do you work to order? Do you have clients or magazines that ask you to do what they think is right?

B.M .: V Soviet times many photographers, even almost all of them were doing something else, for example, working as engineers or standing at the machine, and this, in fact, guaranteed their creative independence. Nowadays a photographer often makes something that can be hung on a wall or sold. You are very good, Jurgen, you are invited to shoot for magazines, shoot for advertising and so on. I do not do that. I have to think about a wall, lately a big wall. But it is easier for us than for many other photographers, because each of us has a name, and the name can sometimes be used to impress a collector or a museum.

Yu.T .: But still, let's imagine that the magazine asks you to film me or David Hockney, would you be interested?

B.M .: It will be interesting for me, but at the same time it will be very scary. Such an order requires a special approach.

A fragment of the Manifesta 10 exposition with the work of Boris Mikhailov from the Theater of Military Operations project. Second act. Intermission". State Hermitage, General Staff Building in the General Staff Building. Photo by Ekaterina Allenova / Artguide

Yu.T .: But I'm always scared. They often say to me: "You have done this so many times in your life, why worry." And every time I answer: "I still worry." Every time as the first!

B.M .: How much do you shoot in three months?

Yu.T .: Depends on the season. In spring and autumn I have a lot of advertising shootings, and in winter or summer there are more exhibitions and other similar stories. But I already want to work less. I need more time for myself. By the way, what did you do in Japan? Was it your idea or did someone invite you?

B.M .: I never plan anything in advance, I never build concepts in my head. I just come somewhere, and this place begins to influence me, or rather, we begin to interact with each other. Ideas are born at this very moment and in this very place. But the place often works more than me. And Canon invited me to Japan. Then my book about Japan was published in a German publishing house.

Yu.T .: Don't you think there are too many photographers in the world?

B.M .: Too much.

Victoria Mikhailova: Put poison in their pasta!

Yu.T .: Which photographer do you like?

B.M .: Dido Moriyama really like it and Eggleston is very good too! Cartier-Bresson! Nobuyoshi Araki! In general, I like a lot of people, because today a bad photographer cannot become famous. All classical photographers are good, and new artists, in my opinion, are great.

Yu.T .: Tell me what you do for GARAGE magazine.

B.M .: I made a story about the past when my mom was young. I wanted to revive the past and compare it with the present, compare life in the Soviet Union with modern life. I wanted to reanimate time and reproduce images that could, but for some reason were not created then. I was interested in finding something new in the old, making a photographic story about life. It is interesting to try to make a collective portrait and convey the anxiety and fear of that time. But I was not trying to imitate the "event" - rather, to recreate the atmosphere of those years. I filmed all this partly in the cinema hall in Kharkov, partly at home, I also supplemented this project with old photographs.

Yu.T .: Is it hard for you to sell your work?

B.M .: Not easy.

Yu.T .: Have you ever been interested in filming the oligarchic world?

B.M .: It used to be interesting, now it's gone.

Yu.T .: When was it interesting?

B.M .: In the early 90s, when they just got big money and they were in the center of life and attention. Then they liked that they were photographed, they were interested, everything revolved around them. But today photography is no longer something special for them, and the photographer is not. Then they stopped showing to the public.

Yu.T .: You pay people to pose for your photos.

B.M .: Crying to everyone.

Yu.T .: I didn't get paid.

B.M .: I'll give you a few little things, I didn't take pictures of my face!

Yu.T .: How much do you pay them?

B.M .: Little money. About five to ten dollars. But for a lot of the people I filmed, it was good money.

Yu.T .: That is, you always walk around with a decent amount of money in your pocket!

B.M .: Sometimes I have problems. I picked up lice from homeless people once. And another one I went to take pictures of the visitors to the pool in East Berlin, suddenly a policeman comes up and demands to give him the film, says that it is impossible to shoot, although there were no prohibition signs. The film had to be returned. But then I decided to go to the police and demand my tapes back. And after a while they really were given to me, along with printed photographs and a certificate, which said that it was possible to shoot in places where shooting is prohibited for the sake of art and for the sake of history. After that, my wife told me: "This certificate is the only proof that you are an artist."