Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

Inez van Lamsweerde (born September 25, 1963, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) & Vinoodh Matadin (born September 29, 1961, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) are a dutch fashion photographer duo [http://www.airdeparis.com/lamsweerde_matadin.pdf] , well known for their work for fashion magazines, advertising campaigns, and for their independent art work.

Biography

Vinoodh Matadin studied fashion design in Amsterdam between 1981 and 1985, and started working after finishing his studies. When he met Inez van Lamsweerde in 1986 [http://www.answers.com/topic/inez-van-lamsweerde] , she was an art student at Gerrit Rietveld Academie (between 1985 and 1990), and the two became partners both professionally and in private. In their collaborations they moved between art and fashion, and rather than making comments on fashion from an outside point of view, they’ve rather become a part of the system. Still, they’re best known for images that can be interpreted as both critical and slightly disturbing. Matadin & van Lamsweerde introduced digitally manipulated photographs at an early stage, allowing them to explore questions about gender and sexuality, reality, the superficial, and identity [http://www.modernamuseet.se/v4/templates/template3.asp?lang=Eng&id=2385] .

Inez spent a year on a studio grant at the PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York 1992 - 1993, where she produced two series of photos that led to her breakthrough [http://www.answers.com/topic/inez-van-lamsweerde] ; "Final Fantasy", a mix between adult features and adolescent bodies, inspired by the hype surrounding skinny supermodel Kate Moss, questioning the child as the symbol of innocence; and "Thank You Thighmaster", merging life size doll-women with human models [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.02/lamsweerde.html] ; creating a sophisticated interplay between glamour and horror. In 1995, van Lamsweerde made the more subtle manipulated series "The Forest", of men with feminine body parts.

Matadin & van Lamsweerde continued to explore the boundaries of reality, placing stock photo behind the models, creating a gap between the "real" models and the obvious faked backgrounds, such as in "Go Cindy, Go Cindy" from 1995 [Lamsweerde, Inez van & Matadin, Vinoodh; "Photographs"; Schirmer/Mosel, Munich 2001; ISBN 3-8296-0034-8] .

In 1997 they collaborated for the first time with french designer and art director duo M/M Paris, in a campaign for Yohji Yamamoto, which has become an icon in the history of fashion photography. The collaboration has continued since, and has resulted in works such as "milneufseptantesix", campaigns for Balenciaga, and the video for artist Björk’s "Hidden Place".

The digital manipulations of their work became more subtle as they developed their personal artistic language [http://www.modernamuseet.se/v4/templates/template3.asp?lang=Eng&id=2385] , and presently the only manipulations made are regular retouching.

Commercial Work

Matadin’s and van Lamsweerde’s work have been published in magazines like French, British, Japanese, Italian, and American Vogue, as well as V Magazine, W Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, GQ, Self Service, Purple Fashion, Visionaire, Fantastic Man, Butt, VMAN, Arena Homme Plus, and 032c.

They have produced photographs for the advertising campaigns of Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Chloé, Stella McCartney, Valentino, Gucci, Givenchy, Roberto Cavalli, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gap, Cesare Paciotti, Narciso Rodriguez, Pucci, Emanuel Ungaro, Balmain, Isabel Marant, Callaghan, H&M, Lee Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt, Joop Jeans, and Roberto Coin.

References

External links

[http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=253269255 Fansite at MySpace]

[http://www.airdeparis.com/inezvin.htm# Air de Paris gallery website]

[http://www.matthewmarks.com/press/118.pdf PDF-collection of articles from a few magazines]

[http://www.mmparis.com/ivlvm/index.html Projects with M/M (Paris)]