Juergen Teller’s On The Roof

One of the few pleasures left for smokers is the classic excuse for escaping a bad party: “I’m just going outside for a cigarette”. It is a sweet reserve for those who otherwise only look forward to a depleted bank account and life-threatening illness during the course of their addiction. It appears that two best friends gave just that excuse recently, and luckily for us they had a video camera with them.

Those friends are photographer Juergen Teller and director TJ Wilcox, the pair behind the video and print campaign for Marc Jacobs’ Daisy fragrance. The resulting film is Juergen Teller: Exposed, and it shows Teller on the streets and rooftops of New York, smoking and chatting to Wilcox, who is behind the camera. The footage is handheld and occasionally the sound goes because of the wind, but that is the beauty of this video. It lends the spur-of-the-moment feel, which allows you to concentrate on the scenery of the city and the anecdotes of the photographer, which is a nice change from the highly stylized work they otherwise offer us.

Teller has worked with a whole bunch of fashion houses, including Vivienne Westwood, Helmut Lang, Marc Jacobs, Yves Saint Laurent and most recently Celine. He muses on how he got into photography, his shoots for the fashion industry, his work ethic and his meeting with the infamous OJ Simpson. Not a bad trade-off for the cold and the passive smoke.

There is an exhibition of Teller’s work currently showing until 17  March at Lehmann Maupin in New York.

Details

• Directed by

  TJ Wilcox

• Starring

  Juergen Teller

• Production Company

  Nowness

• Release Date

  20 February 2012