THE HAGUE.- The Kunstmuseum Den Haag presents Can Love Be a Photograph, a major retrospective celebrating the 40-year career of legendary Dutch-born photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
This monumental exhibition, consisting of 18 galleries, reflects the artists’ shared life and creative partnership since 1986. As pioneers of digital image-making, Inez & Vinoodh occupy a singular position at the intersection of fashion and art, continuously pushing the boundaries of photography as a medium. What characterises their work is the mingling of the familiar and the unsettling, the quotidian and the uncanny.
“Inez & Vinoodh have been able to create something utterly fantastic; an invisible reality that looks artificial but is not. A reality that speaks of our ungraspable inner world and its relationship with our perceptions and imagination. A world in which love and passion, once they encounter each other, cannot separate any longer. Blessed and doomed at the same time. Yes.” - Francesco Bonami, from ‘Inner Invisible Artificiality’, 2025
Spanning four decades and encompassing art, fashion, and portraiture, the exhibition is organised thematically rather than chronologically. This curatorial approach challenges conventional ideas of photography as a mirror of reality and investigates notions of gender, identity, and the enduring power of beauty. By removing a linear timeline, images are allowed to form new relationships with one another, emphasising the distinction between time and history. Viewing every image as a form of self-portraiture, Inez & Vinoodh frame the exhibition as a testament to love – understood as the act of truly seeing, valuing, and cherishing one another.
At the heart of the exhibition, under the theme The Psychomorphic Phenomenon, three seminal series are shown together for the first time. These premonitionary series from the early nineties use digital manipulation to portray human beings ravaged by feelings. This central room of the exhibition features works that examine the strive for perfection in our physical appearance in a digital age (Thank You Thighmaster, 1993), a presumed innocent childhood (Final Fantasy, 1993) and for the constant confirmation of masculine power roles (The Forest, 1995) - leading to a failure of intimacy.
The Kiss, regarded by the artists as the emblem of the exhibition, transcends a single moment of intimacy. A prevalent motif in their work since 1999, The Kiss explores both physical and emotional fusion – the point at which two individuals become indistinguishable from one another. For the first time, three iconic works from the Me Kissing... series are exhibited alongside their newest related body of work, Think Love, in which intention and affection are passed on to the next generation.
Alongside their artistic practice, Inez & Vinoodh have, for decades, created influential campaigns for leading fashion houses including Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel. These works focus on the relationship between commerce and culture. As writer Michael Bracewell observed, Inez & Vinoodh “manipulate the high-gloss surface of fashion photography into psychological allegory.” The fashion imagery in Can Love Be a Photograph questions whether glamour truly offers a path to happiness.
A dedicated gallery in the show will highlight the artists’ editorial and collage work, emphasising the importance of collaboration and teamwork throughout their career. With a focus on the print medium, it is a celebration of the relationship between image, text and layout with vitrines of their published work and monumental prints straight from the magazines. Galleries of larger-than-life portraits of film stars, musicians, artists, and politicians – figures such as Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, and Brad Pitt – are presented with an almost sacred aura, forming a contemporary pantheon of modern icons. With a similar approach, their images of flowers defy the genre of still life, crossing over into portraiture, hung side-by-side with the most well-known of faces. Together they emphasise notions of growth, potential and energy.
The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Can Love Be a Photograph – 40 Years of Inez & Vinoodh. Featuring essays by among others, Donatien Grau, Francesco Bonami, Pamela Chen, and Willemijn van der Zwaan, the publication offers multiple perspectives on the artists’ work. An intimate interview conducted by Tilda Swinton sees Inez & Vinoodh reflect on their career and recurring themes. Designed by renowned graphic design duo M/M (Paris) and published by Hannibal Books, the catalogue is available worldwide and in the museum shop, which will be curated by Inez & Vinoodh for the duration of the exhibition.
