Juergen Teller: The Myth

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'This is my most romantic project.' - Juergen Teller

The latest collaboration with his wife Dovile Drizyte, The Myth is Juergen Teller's playful interpretation of the "legs up" fertility myth. Following the humorous 2021 series "We are building our future together" in which the Tellers dressed up as construction workers on building sites, this project reflects the next stage of their relationship as they start a family together. The enchanting location is the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como where the Tellers created images in each and every of the hotel's 97 unique rooms-in some we see the whole of Drizyte's naked body, while in others her cropped legs or feet appear unexpectedly: peeking behind duvets, curtains and furniture, tender juxtapositions in Teller's loving gaze.

The theatricality and ambiguity of these performed scenarios recalls Teller's seminal 2004 series "Louis XV" shot with Charlotte Rampling at the Htel de Crillon, Paris. This conscious revisiting of a prior experience is firmly embedded in Teller's mythology, yet this time there is an air of serendipity. Run by the same family for four generations and shaped by tradition, the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni is filled with art alluding to motherhood and the family unit. Paintings and sculptures of pregnancy, babies, storks and cherubs became an unexpected good luck charm for the Tellers' future parenthood and lend their amorous beauty to these deeply personal images, embodiments of the trust and creative connection between Teller and Drizyte.

Author Bio

Juergen Teller, born in Erlangen in 1964, studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt fr Photographie in Munich. His work has been published in influential magazines such as Vogue, System, i-D, POP and Arena Homme+, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions including those at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Teller won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2003, and from 2014 to 2019 held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Knste Nrnberg. His books with Steidl include Louis XV (2005), Marc Jacobs Advertising, 1998-2009 (2009), Siegerflieger (2015), Handbags (2019), Leben und Tod (2020), William Eggleston 414 (2020), Auguri (2022), The Master V (2023) and Notes About My Work (2023).