The New York-based photographic partners Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin first met in their hometown Amsterdam as a photography student and fledgling fashion designer, respectively. Some twenty-five years later they have returned to stage ‘Pretty Much Everything’ at Amsterdam’s Foam Photography Museum.
Displaying roughly 300 images, the space will play host to an array of fashion, art and portrait photography from the duo who pioneered digital picture production. Famous for their ‘four eyes’ approach -Inez art directs and photographs their subject face on, whilst Vinoodh takes shots from the sidelines- the pair are amongst the few photographers who straddle both the art and fashion worlds. Known for their multi-layered surfaces, Inez and Vinoodh’s work is instantly recognisable whether found on a gallery wall or the pages of a fashion magazine. Their manipulated images are most often disconcerting and at times verge on the grotesque, yet somehow manage to achieve an other-worldly beauty. Visually arresting, these are images that demand to be looked at and ‘Pretty Much Everything’ is an opportunity to get up-close and personal with some of their most iconic prints – including Clint Eastwood consumed by a cloud of smoke (New York Times Magazine, 2005) and Antony Hegarty, tears of blood streaming down his face (Fantastic Man, 2006). Curated by Inez and Vinoodh themselves, together with M/M Paris and Foam’s own Marcel Feil, the exhibition disregards chronological order and instead organises the prints according to personal, social and political associations. Ranging from grandiose to miniature in scale, the images in the exhibition are a spatial representation of ‘pretty much everything’ that Inez & Vinoodh choose to remember.
Runs until 15th September.
