Juergen Teller, self-portrait
I was crossing the disaster-like construction zone on Bernard Ouest in Montreal yesterday, dodging potholes and sheets of rain and trying to work out in my mind what makes me prefer Juergen Teller to Terry Richardson, an amusing way to keep my mind off of the drab weather.
Terry Richardson, Self-Portrait
I've heard the two photographers mentioned in the same breath before, because they're both working with compact cameras in a snap-shot aesthetic, have distinct visual styles, and toy with narrative, but while I take time to mull over any Teller image I stumble upon, I recoil when I'm thumbing through a magazine and am faced with a photograph by Richardson. I find most of the images either vaguely repulsive, too garish. I'm not overly prudish - vulgar sexuality has some appeal for me - but Richardon's granulated images, shot with dirty filters against a bone white wall are alienating, suffocating and hopeless; made even more so by the forced erotic exuberance. Teller plays with his subjects, while Richardson toys with them.
Juergen Teller, Go-SeesJuergen Teller's book Go-Sees: Girls Knocking at my Door (pub. 1999) photographs of girls who arrived at his London studio in the late 90s, hoping to find a modeling contract, and one gets the feeling that unlike Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, the meetings didn't end up in rumbling misogynistic wrestling matches through his studio.
Juergen Teller, Winona Ryder
It's an oft-muttered truism that what compelling advertising is about is aspiration and mood, and not the product, so it's tiring to even have to mention that the clothing is peripheral, if at all present in the photographs Teller has taken for his collaborative campaign with Marc Jacobs. Truthfully, I wouldn't mind if Teller did highlight some of the clothing - Jacobs' clothing is, to my eyes, handsome, tasteful and appealing.
Juergen Teller, Victoria McMenamy
In contrast, Terry Richardson strikes me as heavy-handed even in his non-commercial photographs, and while Teller can do raw and vulgar (such as his above portrait of model Kristen McMenamy for Versace), they come off as glimpses into an intimate and private relationship between the subject and the photographer, and not exhibitionist poses enacted in private destined for public consumption. Whether Teller's photographs are more authentic or not isn't the criteria that I judge them by, but how strongly they resonate with me is.
Juergen Teller, Charlotte Rampling
Terry Richardson is American, with all of the tired and negative connotations of that word - he's tattoeed, mustachioed, his personality overblown. And Teller's quiet German character - his retiring, quiet, and slightly tubby profile - manifests itself as a wounded giant whenever he appears in his photographs, as in the case of the above photograph of him and actress Charlotte Rampling. Wearing only silver shorts, Teller finds seemingly un-self-conscious comfort burying himself in the arms of an actress that was declared by Vogue in 1974 the most beautiful woman in the world, and who committed to a series of risqué photos (Rampling and caviar at Teller's groin, romping through a costly suite in the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris) titled Louis XV promptly after meeting Teller.
Louis XV notwithstanding, Jurgen's hotel rooms are scenes of living - room service has been ordered, a day was spent shoplifting(in Winona Ryder's case), there's a quiet and contemplative pace. Glamour in repose, languid and a little sleepy-eyed, contrasted with hotels that, to Richardson, are likely to be trashed by Damon Dash et al. on a mid-week bender.
Terry Richardson, Stephanie Seymour for Sisley
Terry Richardson has always been associated with two organizations in my mind - Vice Magazine, and the clothing company Sisley. His Sisley work has been, like much of Teller's Jacobs campaigns, shot in the clean confines of slightly shabby 19th century hotel suites. But Richardson's hotel rooms, generally shot for Sisley, are populated by sheeny vampiric people on the move, breathless and perilously incapable of conversation. The highly-sheened and well-oiled models enact seemingly violent pre-coital dances against a wallpaper damask backdrop, the blue, violet and purple hues intensified with a silver tint. This is what I imagine the artwork of a 1995 Roxy Music album would look like - an attempt at empty glamour that's not glamorous, and served without comment.
In this case we find, as in the case of Rampling, a woman (Stephanie Seymour, super-model) past what some might consider her prime (she was 38 at this point) in a hotel room, cast by the voyeuristic Richardson in the role of an Amazon straddling a faceless male model on a Louis XIV-style chaisse.
Juergen Teller, Stephanie Seymour
Here Teller photographs Seymour lying prostrate on Seymour and her husband's duplicate of Jeff Koons' 1992 Puppy. It's compelling, slightly weird, and strangely soothing, and I much prefer it to Richardson's portraits of Seymour. Admittedly Teller was bound to come out on top - Teller worked with Seymour for two years on a series of portraits, whereas Richardson was shooting for an ad campaign and was bound by commercial considerations, the whims of art directors, and quite possibly their idea of who Terry Richardson was, but I think given the same creative conditions, Teller would still fare better.
Terry Richardson, The Beckhams
Primarily, the difference in the two is in method - the method by which they interact with their subjects, and how that is reflected in the final product. Teller initiates relationships, his presence is felt off-camera in his photos, and we are aware of darker themes.
Bob Richardson
Finally, it's worth mentioning that Terry Richardson's father was (occasional) Vogue photographer and boyfriend of
Angelica Huston,
Bob Richardson; something I first heard about when I stumbled upon a New Yorker profile of Bob Richardson (
here's the abstract and his
New York Times obit, as he passed in December of 2005), on his photography, his schizophrenia and the fractured state of his life and work. It's sort of strange to ruminate on it, but as much as the two share similarities in work - highly sexualized images that aim at bourgeoisie placidity, there's a depth and eroticism in the darker images of Bob Richardson that is not present in Terry's work. The images are striking, and contemporary, while Terry's seem so desperately of the moment as to be flat and trapping.
Juergen Teller, Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs
Interesting how many subjects the two photographers have shared. Most recently, Teller photographed Victoria Beckham for a Marc Jacobs ad that featured her seemingly disembodied legs in heels, popping out of a shopping bag. A little too Adbusters for my tastes, though.
