Stephanie on Puppy, Connecticut 2000 2003

Jürgen Teller (born 1964) is certainly the most important fashion photographer of the 1990s. Today his works are shown in museums and galleries worldwide, most recently in the Hamburg Deichtorhallen and the Kunsthalle Wien. His subtle gaze directs itself behind the highly polished facades of immaculately pure fashion photography. He looks for the unexpected and individual in a model – and always leaves room for the whimsical and strange. He became famous with his photo series of the naked Kirsten McMenamy, whom he photographed at the end of a photo-shoot – overworked, exhausted and very authentic. After his studies at the Münchner Fachakademie, the young photographer decided on photo design and fashion photography as his medium. Freelancing and without a job, he dressed his fellow students with clothes from the flea market. In those days like today, he went beyond the boundaries between contract work and artistic photography in his works. He’s one of the very few who  - despite open criticism of the commercial cult of beauty and the illusion of perfection – managed to “get printed” and at the same time make an international career as an artist.  

Petra Prahl