"Defects of style betray defects of content." Juergen teller does not have this problem. He could photograph anything and make the subject modern, funny, real and elusive. There isn't an ad or a photo he's taken that I can't recall exactly.
Teller treats all of his subjects — family members, celebrities, and himself with a uniform style of grit and humor that has become synonymous with fashion as a whole and supersedes itself. He invented it. If photography was taken more seriously in terms of style, not pretentiously, just seriously, we'd say he informed style and design as much or more than the designers or subjects. It takes a lot to make an image, and much more to make it last.
From Cindy Sherman to Winona Ryder, Sofia Coppola, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Stipe, Rufus Wainwright, Arnold Schwarzenegger, O. J. Simpson, Kurt Cobain, Bjork, Kate Moss, Elton John, Pelé, David Hockney, Roni Horn, Sarah Lucas, William Eggleston, Boris Mikhailov, Charlotte Rampling, and Araki Nobuyoshi, and Harmony Korine, he's collaborated with everyone. He makes freaks, nobodies, and everybodies eternal.
I could look at Go-Sees, his series MORE with Stephanie Seymour, and TRACHT, especially, 100 times over and never get bored. Right or wrong, I have absolutely no interest in Miss Universe and he made the whole notion of it so charming and evocative, subversive even, in some other-other way than how it's marketed.
I think about Miss Hawaii, Stephanie Seymour's mouth, Sofia Coppola in the pool, Kate's pink hair, Joan Didion in those glasses, Vivienne Westwood on the sofa, Marion Cotillard in the shower, Gisele on the Mercedes, Stella Tennant with that big grey Margiela sleeve, Björk in the Blue Lagoon, pregnant Nataša in the woods, Daria Werbowy, Kristen McMenamy, and Mariacarla Boscano broadly, and the folded over girl (Lori Fredrickson) in the doorway fairly often.
His grubby glamour and plainly erotic, sometimes autoerotic portraiture is so disarmingly candid, it's as if he foretold HD, Instagram, Selfies, BTS, Camera Phones, while creating a recipe for what fashion imagery, or style, is: isolated surroundings, overexposure, unguarded expression, seemingly candid... Nude, raw, washed out, grubby glamour with a fuck-you-we're-living-the-dream-even-if-it's-dirty-or-it-costs-too-much appeal. True celebrity.
There's a self-possessed handsomeness to his visions of beauty. Maybe that's him in there. He's often in the pictures. I mean more that Teller makes women look important, never wilted. He even makes rotten fruit, small children, and ducklings look famous.
He came up at a time where sexualization wasn't stigmatized at all. The industry had no rules. The freedom you see in the pictures is really there and the flip side of that is danger. If there is morality in this industry, I certainly haven't seen it. I mean, systemically. I see it in individuals, most often in the ones who leave.
I think of the line "Don't tell me there's no poetry in office buildings!" There is real beauty in "the commercial arts". Teller makes everyone and everything look new, forever. I understand he's considered a fine artist by some. I don't think that's right, but I do think he's a bit of a modern-day Warhol.
I don't know that you can sell anything "morally". If you want to sell something beautifully, unconventionally, with aspirational freedom and perma-modernity metamemorysex, he's obviously your guy.
—Lauren Shooster