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What do a tree, a parked car, and one of the fashion industry’s biggest names have in common? A new cover shoot for W magazine sees German photographer Juergen Teller turn his lens on 22 celebrities, from George Clooney to Riz Ahmed to Gal Gadot, in the humble surroundings of an LA street. A large tree features heavily, with LaKeith Stanfield, Taylour Paige and several others posed in front of it, while Nicole Beharie crouches in a grocery store shopping cart, and Steven Yeun squats on a folding chair on the street.
When the images were released this week, it didn’t take long for the internet to respond. Memes and jokes began to circulate, expressing the collective disappointment, anger and sheer bafflement that many felt at the resolute amateurism of the shoot. “Juergen Teller needs to be stopped bc these look like photos my mother would take”, one Twitter user wrote, while another simply stated, “juergen teller is going to hell for this”. Many pointed out the lack of attention to lighting and colour grading in post-production, with some taking matters into their own hands and editing the photographs themselves. Others reflected on the awkward expressions of the celebrities, as if they had been caught off-guard as the shutter clicked. “W Magazine Cover Stars, Ranked by How Much Pain They’re In”, a headline offered.
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An insight into the process behind the shoot from one of the stars shed some light on matters, but didn’t exactly warm the critics to Teller and his craft. “This @wmag shoot was the fastest of my life. 20 seconds, two clicks,” wrote Riz Ahmed, adding, “Juergen Teller is the OG.” It confirmed the suspicions of many, conjuring a portrait of a photographer too lazy to invest the time and energy expected of a major celebrity shoot. “They really said ‘meet me by the tree outside the office. I’ll be the one with the iPhone’”, one person suggested; “juergen teller get to work at 2:59 and clock out at 3:00”, said another. Following a year living under the various restrictions of the pandemic, with many in the creative industry out of work and struggling, Teller’s shoot has struck decidedly the wrong note.
“His approach could be described as anti-celebrity, revealing the rich and famous to be just like the rest of us”
Those old enough to recall the point-and-shoot imagery of Teller’s 1990s campaigns for the likes of Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and countless others have been quick to point out that his low-fi style has remained a constant for decades. His approach could be described as anti-celebrity, revealing the rich and famous to be just like the rest of us in their blemishes, foibles and personal vanities. This democratising perspective is best encapsulated in his cult book Go Sees (1999), for which he photographed aspiring models sent for test shoots at his West London studio; rather than invite them in to pose, he took snaps of them in the street outside. While Go Sees remains a refreshingly spontaneous peek away from the glitz and glamour of the fashion world, its scope no longer stands out at a time when social media has finally lifted the curtain on the industry.
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It is often said that camera phones have made us all photographers. In an ever more crowded arena, it is worth asking if there is still space for photographers like Juergen Teller, who arguably built their career on a radical aesthetic of amateurism. When we are bombarded with images and videos circulating on TikTok and Instagram, the line between celebrity and non-celebrity is constantly in flux. After a year in lockdown, that boundary has become hazier still, with restrictions that have led to celebrities being photographed at home, without the typical hair and make-up teams associated with large shoots.
Robert Pattison’s zany self-portraits for GQ went viral last year, in which he embraced the experience of self-isolation in shots that showed him eating cereal, hoarding toilet roll and lying on the sofa. Teller’s W magazine shoot could also be seen to emulate the limitations of lockdown, but where Pattison’s portraits playfully embrace his self-evident lack of photographic experience, Teller’s is burdened by decades of professional work that leave the images feeling forced.
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“Teller, with his white, male perspective, no longer represents a radical choice, and W have missed an opportunity to diversify through new talent”
The hefty fee associated with a cover shoot also looms large, and has unsurprisingly left many commentators questioning the value of Teller’s photographs. If all it takes is two clicks, is Teller’s expertise really worth paying for? Meanwhile photographers such as Tyler Mitchell (the first African American photographer to shoot a Vogue cover in its 125-year history, turning his lens on Beyonce in 2018) and Nadine Ijewere (the first Black woman to shoot a Vogue cover) have risen to prominence in recent years. Teller, with his white, male perspective, no longer represents a radical choice, and W have missed an opportunity to diversify through new talent. That Teller himself is now a celebrity photographer, despite his antagonism towards it, is a sad irony that appears to have passed him by.
For Gen Z, unfamiliar with Teller’s legacy, his photographs no longer hold the power they once did. When many are craving aspirational and escapist imagery after a challenging and painful year, Teller’s shots in front of a tree and parked cars spectacularly miss the mark. Some have argued that Teller’s detractors “just don’t get” his work, pointing out that this is not the first time that his photographs of celebrities have drawn ire (notably his shoot of Kim and Kanye for System magazine in 2015). But in 2021, when compassion and sincerity have taken on new significance in popular debate, there is an unwelcome snark to a shoot that you need to be “in the know” to understand. As the world continues to change rapidly around us, it is difficult to envisage a future place for Teller’s particular brand of photography. While we all try our hardest to piece our lives back together, Teller continues to perform the opposite.
