Lucy Gordon, Eva Herzigova, Desiree and Candice Neil, Joanne Walpole, Sylvia, Anja Poulsen, Melissa Silver, Alice Dodd, Sheriee, Summer, Domenique, Ana, Susan, Deidre Wolf, Natasha, Shalom, and Kelly Harrison; these are just a few of the hundreds of aspiring models who, between 1998 and 1999, visited Juergen Teller’s studio in West London in the hope of becoming the industry’s new face.
In Go-Sees, Teller chronicles a year of such meetings with women and young girls from all walks of life. Shot in the doorway of Teller’s studio, the book becomes a two-way exploration of the photographer’s complicity in framing his subjects and in promoting a specific conception of the photogenic.
The models portrayed become much more than bearers of externally directed aesthetic values. While the photographic gaze is shaped by, and in turn shapes, the conventions of the go-see, Teller suggests that even within these parameters it is possible to find new ways of seeing.
