Vinoodh Matadin

You don’t look forty-five.

Well, I work hard and I get very little sleep… More and more work, more and more travel, more and more stress. But that’s life, I guess. And I share my life and work with the most incredible woman in the world. That helps!

Why are you working so much?

I think it changed about two years ago when we switched from film to digital. Now we can shoot a whole story in one day, edit it in one day, do the layout, send it away and it’s done. Then you move on to the next job. Before that, you had to wait one day to develop the film, then edit the film – the process took a whole week. And then there was the disappointment when it wasn’t good. (laughs) The nice thing about shooting digital now is that you can really see what you’re doing. You can react to it, change it and make it better. You can be much more free and more creative. I think it works better for us. We are able to try out new things or use accidents as final results.

But it’s a paradox because although the shooting, editing and selecting process happens quicker, it leads to more work and less time. The work goes faster but it doesn’t necessarily open up more space in your brain, it just opens up more space for work.

Oh yeah, that’s totally true.

It’s crazy. So did you switch entirely to digital?

Yes. Well, we started in ’91 shooting on film and then reworking all our pictures on the computer. The first story we did for The Face in 1994 was entitled For Your Pleasure. It was a story about Veronique Leroy’s collection. We worked for two months on that story – thinking about the concept, picking the clothes, the models, we did everything ourselves. We shot the girls in the studio and later we superimposed stock-images.

I remember a rocket, an office…

Yes, that’s the story. The office girl, the disco girl, the sporty girl. It was all based-on stock-images and how they divide the world in all these different categories.

But it was worth two months of work because the story was remarkable.

Well, it stood out because it came out during the high peak of grunge. Most pictures you saw back then were black and white with no hair and make-up. Bad mood, low attitude. We thought it was time to counterattack and put some colour and energy back into fashion. (laughs)

Did you start as a photographer right after school?

No, I started out as a fashion designer. I met Inez twenty years ago at the Fashion Academy in Amsterdam.

I didn’t know that you were a fashion designer.

Basically I started my own company and my own collection, Lawina, when I was 24, together with a friend from the academy, Rick Bovendeert. I think halfway through the collection we were looking for a photographer and somebody was like, “Remember that girl from school, Inez? She’s a very good photographer.” So I called Inez.

When was that?

This was in ’86. Inez was still in art school. And from that day on we started working together. We did the styling and casting together for my first show. Inez and her friends like Rineke Dijkstra and Chris Brodahl were models for my show.

How long did you do your own label?

For five years. First the idea was to do one collection, make it really good, and then go to Paris to look for work. But after the first collection, which was a success in Holland, people started buying the clothes and I thought, maybe I should produce this. So we started producing the clothes. And then after a couple of years, you realise you can’t do design and production at the same time. You keep investing money into production, so somehow the more you sell, the bigger your debt becomes. We did everything from making the patterns, to sewing, to selling the collections to the stores. And then sometimes stores didn’t pay and you would lose all your money. That’s why I later advised Viktor & Rolf to do couture shows in Paris and make them very spectacular to try to stand out and not to even think about production until your name is big enough to find a backer.

The fashion world was very different in the late ’80s. Was it an exciting period for you?

Of course! Life was very different. Fashion was still very naïve at that time. I think it was way more free. Nowadays it’s product oriented, and investment companies are buying most of the big fashion houses. Therefore they have to sell more products, which makes the pressure much higher. In those days, people just wanted to make different things and express themselves through design. They didn’t think about money all the time. You wanted to be free, you wanted to do your own thing; it didn’t matter if you didn’t have enough money. Especially in Holland with its good welfare system, you could be poor and have a great life. You could do anything; you could even go on holiday when you were poor. (laughs) I knew so many people in the ’70s who were on welfare and travelled around the world. I think Amsterdam was a small paradise in the ’70s and ’80s.

Did you grow up in Amsterdam?

Yeah. I think I had a really incredible youth in Amsterdam. I went to good schools, I had great teachers, and in the afternoons we’d have tea in a coffee shop where others were buying their drugs. It was a totally free minded society.

What did your family do?

My mom worked at the post office and my father worked at the bank, and before that he was a tailor. I always saw him making clothes. So I guess that’s why clothes, or fashion, fascinated me. When I was fifteen I knew I would go into fashion. Well, no, I doubted at the time… Should I go to film school or art college? And in the end, I ended up in photography… It’s a nice middle ground.

Was the cultural environment in Amsterdam very different at that time? Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t think of Amsterdam right now as being very stimulating.

I don’t know. It’s still a beautiful old city. But I’ve been away for fifteen years now, so for me it’s hard to judge. For me Amsterdam was great in the ’70s, like in Turkish Delight, the early Paul Verhoeven movie. It was the centre of hippie-dom. Very free and very safe. It was a creative environment isolated from the rest of the world. It felt like this small bubble where you could develop your own style. Nowadays, if you’re in art school in London, everybody goes to your first show and the press propel you to stardom right away. It’s so much more direct now. While in our day you could really quietly work on your own style and build up experience. You had time to figure it out. And also, because of the Dutch system, you could apply for grants so you didn’t have to work to pay the rent. You could work on your own thing and build up experience, formulate your ideas.

I always think of the Netherlands as a country full of artists and graphic designers.

I think graphic design in the Netherlands has always been really good, from then until now. It’s really in the blood of the Dutch to organise. In Amsterdam I think all the street signs are renewed every few years because they keep redesigning them. Life is very designed in Holland. People love design. It’s everywhere.

It’s part of the culture.

Yeah. I must say, a lot of people always think Dutch style is very Mondriaan based. Geometrical. But the Dutch also had Rembrandt and Van Gogh, who were completely mad and dark. That’s also a part of Holland. We always say, you know, to understand the pictures of Inez and Vinoodh you have to see a movie by Paul Verhoeven. He’s one of our Dutch heroes.

Let’s talk about how you and Inez started doing photography together. Did you suddenly decide to stop making your collections and team up with Inez?

Inez got an artist-in-residence at P.S.1 in New York. And I was working with a producer
in Hong Kong which didn’t work out at all, and I was like, “You know what? I’m going to stop.” I went to New York and I started a new life. Leaving Amsterdam was the best decision we ever made. But at that time it was really hard, going to New York where we didn’t know anybody and we had no money. We were miserable and we didn’t meet anyone. We saw every agent in town – no one was interested. But the good thing was that we just read and watched TV for one year and made new work. We did this series called Thank You Thighmaster where we photographed nudes and digitally removed their erogenous zones, orifices and sexual organs. It addressed how emotions become completely locked up in a body, with people no longer having physical contact, because all communication goes through new technology. There’s always this obsession with being fit here in the States. But what good is a perfect body if there’s no physical contact anymore? We did all the technical stuff in Holland because it was much easier for us to go to a lab and to use Paintbox. Nobody really did that kind of work here in New York at the time. So we went back to Amsterdam, made all the work there, printed it, and then showed it here at P.S.1.

But there wasn’t, like, one day when you decided to work together?

It wasn’t a clear plan, like, “I’ll stop the label and I’ll go and work with you.” It happened organically. Because we were so used to working on my things, it was quite natural that I started helping Inez. That’s how it basically started and how we continued our life. We never really discussed it; we just did it. We were just too excited to go to New York. We arrived there from Hong Kong which felt so futuristic. When we got to New York we were like, wow, New York is so Third World! Everything was still stuck in the ’50s. All the diners, shops, and signs were from the ’50s. It took a while to love the shabbiness of it all and to think of it as picturesque. Especially at that time, the city was so poor. When there was a hole in the street they would just put a metal plate over it because they didn’t have any money to repair it. It was more chaotic, more dangerous.

But it was exciting to be in New York.

Yes, but it was also hard because we really wanted to work as fashion photographers but nobody was interested. Many people were intimidated by new technology. Agents were saying, “We’ll hire you guys if you only do black and white.” Magazines said, “It’s never going to work, it will be too expensive, people will never hire you.” One person who Inez met with was Patrick Demarchelier’s agent, Bryan Bantry. “Go back to Europe, become a star, then return,” he advised. And that’s what we did. After PS1 we went back to Amsterdam and started working from there. When The Face published the For Your Pleasure series, people started calling again from New York, and soon we started working for American Vogue.

Your idea was to develop work that had both an artistic side and a commercial side?

Yes, we always said to ourselves that our pictures should be in magazines and also in galleries. We were young and we had very strong opinions, and in a way we were also quite cynical. Which I think is good. We thought we knew everything. I think at first people really had a hard time understanding what we were doing. They thought we were making a parody of fashion. But we loved fashion yet we also wanted to be critical.

I think your work has a parody side to it, but also a dark side. Something that you don’t understand immediately. It’s funny how you started experimenting with digital possibilities and then later you went into more classical photography.

It was a logical first step for us to do everything on computer and manipulate everything. But at some point you see that people are following you, doing the same thing and making it worse – over-retouching and making it really bad. So you get the impulse, “Let’s destroy what we’re doing.” We started making rough collages on the computer. Putting a horse face where it doesn’t belong, on top of the image. Or leaving a part of the image as a rough cut out. Not making everything perfect and over-retouched because we didn’t think that was really interesting. After that we moved towards classical photography because it’s so iconic and direct.

And beautiful.

It is beautiful. Why not just strip everything and go back to the beauty of people? We started working with art directors like M/M from Paris. We were creating all these layers, and we worked with them to add an extra layer to create a whole new image together. From the beginning Inez and I were really not afraid of text. It can be great to have a good layout on top of your image because it can give the whole image an extra layer. This idea of “respecting the photograph” and hiding the text in a corner never appealed to us.

And now you’re pushing the work further with sculpture.

We’re trying to escape from the idea of a flat surface. That’s why we work with Eugene van Lamsweerde, Inez’s uncle and a great sculptor. It’s a logical step for us because it all started with the computer and thinking in terms of layers and now we’re adding sculpture and space to our pictures as a new layer.

What’s the dynamic between you and Inez like when you work together? Because from the outside I can’t exactly figure out who’s responsible for what but I always associate Inez more with the photography. The one who takes the pictures.

Of the two of us, Inez is the real photographer. I’m more the person who “steals” the pictures.

Steals the pictures?

Inez directs the model or the subject and I always shoot from a different angle, capturing the same moment from another perspective. Mine seem to be more unfinished pictures. They’re more voyeuristic; they show a completely different sensibility. The people in Inez’s pictures are always looking into the camera. They’re aware of the picture being taken at that moment. Inez is like the lead singer. We always say it’s like a band, we play together and she’s the voice of our band. She’s also way better at explaining things than I am, so it’s good. That’s how it works. And before we start working, we know exactly what we want the pictures to be like. But when we’re actually shooting we go with the flow, follow our intuition and feed on the exchange between model and photographer. The good thing is that we feel free because she knows I’ll have the picture or I know she’ll have the picture. We’re never afraid that we don’t have the ultimate shot.

Do you ever argue before a shoot? Like, does Inez ever want something that you don’t?

Oh yeah, that happens. But that’s good. The moment we’re working, we know exactly what we’re doing. Then it’s really organic. It works. Basically every picture we take is a self-portrait – a picture of how we feel at that moment in our life. Are we happy or are we sad? Wild or precise? Whatever it is that’s going on.

A self-portrait of a couple. And of a love story. Because it’s quite a long love story.

Twenty years. Well, no, that’s not true. We’ve worked together for twenty years, but we’ve been together for like fifteen years.

You weren’t together at the beginning?

No, I had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend. It took us six years to synchronise things. (laughs) Which was good, in a way. I knew that she was the one, but we were way too young. And we had our fights in those first six years, which was good too. We worked it all out before we really started being serious.

How do you see your future? Will you stay in New York?

The more we travel the more we like New York. I think New York is really a great city to work and live in, strangely enough. I always feel very free. We have a house in Paris too, and Paris is beautiful, but New York is so much more relaxed. I feel like New York is my main city now. Especially now that we have a son, Charles. It’s his city.

Then why did you decide to have a place in Paris?

Because of Charles. We were always in hotels, and then four years ago when we had Charles we said maybe it’s better to have a place where he has his own room. He’s so happy there… It’s amazing to have a child. He’s the best thing that ever happened to us. It changed everything in our life. We have less time to make art, that’s the sad part. We don’t have as much time anymore because we want to spend it all with Charles. But that will change also. If Charles goes to school here, we’ll travel less, and then we’ll have more time to do our own thing again.

What’s your private life like? Because your work, your commercial work, the magazines, the art, the baby… It’s a lot. Do you do everything together?

We are together 24/7. It’s crazy. All the work and all the people who travel with us, we are always surrounded by strangers or by friends; we have to make time to be alone.

How does it feel to be one of the most wanted photographers on the planet?

(laughs)

Let’s face it…

Yes, it feels good of course. But we never did it because we wanted to be famous or sell our work. We’re just obsessed with making images. It will never stop.

Where do you think that obsession comes from?

I think it’s a journey to your self, basically. It’s like a self-portrait, a way to understand yourself. To take possession of everything around you by taking a picture of it.

Who’s taking your portrait for this article?

Inez, of course.

Do you ever think about developing new work by yourself, just signed Vinoodh Matadin? Does it ever cross your mind?

No. Never.

But you don’t mind that your name always comes second?

I have no problem with having my name behind that of a great person. I mean, I have a fantastic life. I think more people should do this because it’s much nicer when you share your life with somebody. I travel around the world and I can share this with Inez. We go to these amazing places and we meet these amazing people. I have somebody I can share all these moments with. I see a lot of other people who are always alone. That’s really hard. It maybe feels great when you’re young, but then, at forty, it becomes hard.

Sure, and a bit dry… So you say your work is a self-portrait of a couple, or a self-portrait
of your love life…

Totally. The older we become, the more intimate we become. I don’t know if that’s stupid to say, or naïve, but you have to give somebody total attention, to be there. I think that’s called love.

I get the feeling that when you shoot with Inez it’s very free and very natural, that there’s a good energy based on your intimacy with Inez.

Totally, work is the easiest part of our life. And it’s a great life.