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‘We use/abuse the contemporary visual idiom'
The photos that photographer Carmen Freudenthal and stylist Elle Verhagen have been shooting together since 1988, soon after graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, are sometimes utterly unfathomable but still extremely intriguing. The duo was initially expressed themselves through art projects, but gradually shifted their attention to highly unorthodox fashion photography. The Freudenthal/Verhagen style is distinctive for an approach that bristles with humour and their ‘use/abuse' of contemporary visual idioms.
This is perfectly illustrated in their ‘look books' for the German fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm, with whom they have been collaborating intensively since 2000. In cut-and-paste style, Freudenthal (b. 1965) and Verhagen (b. 1962) place models in Escher-like decors, producing uncomfortable pictorial narratives in which the models are contorted into strange poses that stand in stark contrast to what we are used to.
Carmen Freudenthal and Elle Verhagen are regular contributors to the British magazine i-D, and their work has been featured in Visionaire, Self Service and Dazed & Confused. Their unpretentious oeuvre has been exhibited all over the world.