Real Unreal
Inez: This room is called ‘Real Unreal’. There are several works here that are really important to us because the idea of a photograph being a direct reflection of reality is something we questioned from day one. [Here] we are saying the moment you point your camera, you’re already manipulating reality. The works in here all talk about that in different ways, but I would say this image is the one that really changed our lives.

This was shot in the studio, and the background of the space shuttle is an image we found on a thing that was called Image Bank back then, which was a book where you choose [images] from…

Vinoodh: But it was almost organised the same as CNN, in that it had all these themes. It was the medical world, news, sports…

System: It was everything that was happening in the world.

Inez: Yeah, they would sort of divide life for you: travel, sports, business and beauty. And we were fascinated by that, because it was new then. So, we were like, ‘ow, look at them breaking it down for us.’ Our series ‘For Your Pleasure’ was based on that. And this is one of the works in there.

It was one of the first fashion series’ that we did, which was done on the computer in a way in which no one had ever done before. When this was published in The Face, it changed our lives because it came right when grunge imagery was starting to sort of die down a little, and I think we offered something completely different. And from that moment on in 1994, our lives changed. We moved to New York. We had an agent and immediately started working for America Vogue. And that’s it. It was all so great because the clothes on there are from Veronique Leroy, who still does incredible collections. And it was also the start of a really close friendship with her.

Thank You, Thigh Master
Inez: This series is called ‘Thank You, Thigh Master’. I think the one that I would choose out of these four is her. She’s called Joan, and this series was made when we had just moved to New York in the early 1990s and we were very lonely. All we did was watch television and walk on the streets and…

Vinoodh: And read books.

Inez: Read books and try to understand America. And of course, this was the time when the internet started.

Vinoodh: There were 24-hour news sites.

Inez: Yeah, the 24-hour news cycle became a thing. So, the television was always on with the commercials in there, and one of them was of Suzanne Somers promoting a machine to train your thighs, and at the end of the commercials she’d say, ‘Thank you, Thighmaster’.

Vinoodh: ‘It’s so easy!’

Inez: And we thought, OK, so here there’s all this focus on physical perfection, but now with the computer, with the internet, we were saying all contact is going to happen online. There won’t be a necessity for an actual body because everything is virtual. So, we said, let’s create these mutants that are actually mutated because of a psychological condition [caused by] not being able to reach the other physically.

So we closed all the orifices of the model that we shot in the studio, but you still see the blood going through her body because her hands are red. For the faces, we found mannequin dolls from the 1970s that we photographed the same day, but then pulled the skin of the human over it later on the computer to create these humans that have these emotions inside them.

Vinoodh: But they’re completely locked in.

It’s like they are hiding behind those masks.

Inez: Yes, and frozen because there is no way to communicate. To us, it’s kind of wild to know that this is where we are right now. We are in an era of OnlyFans and face filters, of surgery, you know, et cetera, et cetera… We change our bodies, but there’s no real physicality anymore.

Vinoodh: Also, because of the digital world, gender is not important anymore. You can be any gender.

Inez: Yes, you have a chance to be as fluid as you want to be once you’re online.

The digital allows you to do that. If you want to be part of the furry community, you can be furry.

Inez: Yes. Nobody would know if you were really that.

Those people, those mannequins, they actually have some emotions, you know?

Inez: Exactly.

She’s smiling. She’s comfortable. She’s going to love us.

Inez: They’re frozen in their emotions.

Vinoodh: Yes, but it also shows you how nowadays we’re all connected to Instagram, and we’re all so lonely.

Inez: Yeah, more and more lonely.

Vinoodh: And that we can’t communicate anymore.

Two Brains, Two Hearts
Inez: Obviously, [self-portraiture] is the best way to show the fusion of two people, two brains, two hearts, and this sort of melting together and form that makes, for us, a beautiful view of what life together is. I think for us, a self-portrait means that there are no boundaries, because when we photograph someone else, there is an establishing of trust that happens, but also an idea about generosity, carefulness about how you depict someone.

When you photograph yourself or when we’re shooting ourselves together kissing, those boundaries aren’t there. So there is another freedom in that, that you wouldn’t have if you had another person opposite you. So, I think that’s why people like Cindy Sherman have been able to make work that is so extreme at times and sometimes cruel and beautiful, but it’s cruel because she’s working with herself, and we have insane amounts of respect for everybody that poses for us and feel it’s our responsibility to make them in their most sublime form.

Your work has had a huge influence on fashion photography. What still interests you about working with fashion as a subject today?

Vinoodh: Fashion is always changing, so it keeps us alert. And fashion is always working with memories and nostalgia.

Inez: Nostalgia is such a big thing in fashion, and it is so interesting because you get to rework ideas from the past. I mean, that’s what fashion lives on, taking something from the 1980s, or the 1990s now, and mixing it with something completely different, which creates a whole other idea. For us, that’s endlessly inspiring. But we always say there is no fashion without nostalgia.

This drive for the new, this constant energy of young people inventing new ways to make these mixes, it’s such a postmodern practice that for us, it’s endlessly giving us new input, and we love playing with the language of clothes. You know, what a white high heel says about someone as opposed to what a black high heel says, those are two very different shoes that say something very different about a person. To us, building a character like that together with our teams of styling, hair, makeup, and the model is always an adventure.

Vinoodh: Maybe we see fashion also like a constantly moving collage of all these different elements. So, it is always surprising to see, and when you do it really well and everything is in balance, it’s still surprising to people.

Would you say that the garment is the first thing you see, or do you think the person you’re shooting is the first thing that is going to create this image?

Inez: No, for us it’s really the person. That’s been interesting in constructing this exhibition too, for us, because some people say, ‘Oh, but you are printing the picture that you did for French Vogue in 2014 of Kate Moss in the white fur coat,’ or whatever. And we’re like, actually, no, because for us, that picture is incredible. But it doesn’t go beyond what she’s wearing, and that it’s her. For us in this exhibition, it’s really when a picture has people in it and clothes, it’s usually what happens with the people in the picture that makes us choose the image to be put on the wall, to be timeless.

Vinoodh: And they become timeless, especially in this exhibition, because nothing is chronological. We have images next to each other, where one is from today, and the other is 30 years old, but you can’t see when it was made.

You once said that when you photograph someone, sometimes you choose not to meet them beforehand, so the image is not influenced by your personal relationship. How does that distance and the studio setting, which can seem quite stripped back, help you capture someone’s emotions and character?

Inez: For us, the camera is functioning as a kind of protective element that allows you to direct the person. So, it offers a different kind of relationship. So, for us, let’s say, in the case of a celebrity or a musician or an artist, meeting them backstage after a concert, meeting them on their turf or stage, is less of a good way to set up a shoot than when they come to us.

When they come into our studio, they are going into our set of rules. What happens automatically is that within the first three minutes that we meet, we establish a strong sense of trust and care. As we’re talking with this person, we look at their face, we look at how they move, how their shoulders sit under their neck and where things are in someone’s face that we find very exciting and interesting and feel needs to be heightened. And then once that person is sitting in front of us, it’s a very fast process because we’ve been able to quickly study the person and create intimacy.

Vinoodh: And that’s also one of the reasons that we don’t work with a screen on set, because we want the attention to go to the subject and not everyone looking at the screen, because then you lose everything.

Inez: So, it’s a very different setup. It’s really us, the camera and the person. There’s no group of people staring at a screen. We like it when hair and makeup, styling or everyone involved is really focused. You see all the energy lines of the person.

Vinoodh: And then you really get something back

I Love You
Vinoodh: We’re now in the last room of the exhibition. And for us, this is the most important room.

Inez: Yes, because this room has work from three generations in it. A sculpture in here called I Love You was made by my uncle, Eugène van Lamsweerde, who is now 95 years old. We worked with him because we started to get frustrated with the flat surface, and he said there must be other ways to express emotion in three-dimensional form. So, this work was made with him as an idea around a couple and protection, caressing, but also violence at the same time.

Actually, this form we realised is kind of mimicked by Charles in this picture that we created as a self-portrait for System, where our first original self-portrait of me kissing Vinoodh is placed in a glass jar, and he’s here in our garden in the Hamptons, bending over, protecting us, protecting our legacy and our work and our life together. But also as a portal to the future and telling us that nature is actually the only thing that matters, and that we have to take care of it, which is what we are fully realising that his generation is completely focused on.