anywhere out of the world: photographers Vinoodh Matadin and Inez van Lamsweerde

14.1.12

photographers Vinoodh Matadin and Inez van Lamsweerde

Heath Ledger

Since beginning their collaboration in the late 1980s, photographers Vinoodh Matadin and Inez van Lamsweerde have become known for their edgy and creative photography which blurs the line between art and fashion. Three decades later, they're still pushing artistic boundaries( Lanvin campaign, all the V front covers, etc).

A photograph by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin is almost always instantly identifiable. Be it an image from the duo's longstanding collaboration with Yves Saint Laurent or their beautiful nude-portraits series, the Dutch pair consistently inject their work with a slightly surreal, subversive twist. "There’s a duality and ambiguity in every image," says Van Lamsweerde. "There’s always a dichotomy — whether it’s the tension between the beautiful and the grotesque, the spiritual and the mundane, high-fashion and low-fashion — there’s this in-between moment." To commemorate over 30 years of being the industry's most in-demand couple (who have a son, Charles), Taschen’s released book, Pretty Much Everything, contains, well, pretty much everything over the span of their career.

My favorite photos are the ones where they shoot celebrities in black and white. The celebs almost seem like they're distressed, breathing death underneath their most vivid apparences!