In Conversation: Inez and Vinoodh, ‘Can Love Be a Photograph’

Interview by Lynn Mathuthu

Inez & Vinoodh, Me Kissing Vinoodh (Eternally), 2010

Nan Goldin once said, “I don't select people in order to photograph them; I photograph directly from life”, intimating that a deep emotional connection is a prerequisite between a photographer and their subject. Throughout their 40-year career, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have captured the privacy between photographer and subject; the unwatched intimacy which only exists when two people share a genuine connection. The viewer is invited to submerge themselves in this emotional charge, becoming completely engrossed in the final image.

The retrospective exhibition currently showing at Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands, titled ‘Can Love Be a Photograph’, poses not so much a question as a statement. Can a photograph showcase the world as it is? Can it reveal how we are shaped emotionally? The galleries are arranged thematically, between reality and artifice, a tension that is omnipresent in Inez and Vinoodh’s work and invites the viewer to question identity and how it is perceived.

For Inez and Vinoodh, photography is a way of holding onto the things they love, becoming a didactic collection of admiration and inspiration. It is a relishing of the inner life of the atmosphere surrounding the image itself. Malleability and image manipulation become tools to reveal the inner workings of the image, demonstrating how intimate and humane it can be. Whether it is A$AP Rocky and Rihanna strolling with their newborn along an unidentifiable coastline, Bill Murray with flowers woven into his beard, Addison Rae sprawled on a staircase, or Natalie Portman staring blankly into the distance, evoking a contemporary Madonna and Child, Inez and Vinoodh photograph directly from life. What remains is their distinct visual language, using their tools to draw emotion to the surface and capture not only their subjects, but the atmosphere itself.

Lynn Mathuthu speaks with Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin about their exhibition and book release.

Inez & Vinoodh, Kate, 1999

LYNN MATHUTHU: In your photographs, time appears to dissolve rather than move linearly. Why is it important for you to subvert conventional notions of time? Is time something that unsettles you?

INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE & VINOODH MATADIN: We have never experienced time as linear and in our work we question a photograph as the purveyor of truth. We love that through image manipulation we can disrupt the decisive moment of time. In our exhibition an image from 1993 can suddenly speak directly to one from 2025. That is why the exhibition is arranged thematically rather than chronologically: it lets images from different periods converse with one another. Time does not exactly unsettle us, but the idea of losing people does. Photography is our way of holding on — of making a moment, a person, a feeling continue. 

LM: When working on set, you photograph your subject simultaneously. How do you negotiate control while maintaining consistency in the final image?

I&V: Because we photograph together, control is always shared. It is not about one of us directing and the other following; it is more like a continuous exchange of instinct, trust, and correction. The consistency comes from developing basically one shared eye after so many years. We may each see differently in the moment, but we are always moving toward the same emotional truth.

Inez & Vinoodh, Can Love Be a Photograph, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, published by Hannibal Books. 

Inez & Vinoodh, A$AP Rocky, RZA & Rihanna – Vogue UK, 2023

LM: You were early pioneers of digital manipulation in works such as ‘Thank You Thighmaster’ (1993) and ‘The Forest’ (1995). What compelled you to challenge prevailing ideas of the ‘real’ at that time, and does that impulse still drive your practice today?

I&V: In the early 1990s, digital manipulation allowed us to show that a photograph was never simply “real.” Framing the image while taking the picture is always a manipulating choice. We just took that several steps further by altering the images on the computer. Works like ‘Thank You Thighmaster’, ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘The Forest’ show mutations through psychological events. Thus questioning  gender, identity, innocence, intimacy, perfection, before these notions became part of the mainstream visual culture.

LM: While assembling four decades of work for the exhibition and book ‘Can Love Be a Photograph’, what did you learn about your own work?

I&V: We learned that the work has always been about love, even when it looked like fashion, experimentation, portraiture, or manipulation. Looking back, we saw how much we have been trying to hold on to everyone we photograph. The exhibition made clear that love is not just a subject in the pictures — it is the force that animates them.  

Inez & Vinoodh, Can Love Be a Photograph, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, published by Hannibal Books. 

LM: In an attention economy where fashion imagery is increasingly ephemeral, how do you, as photographers, attempt to resist or slow this down?

I&V: We resist the greed and speed of content needs by prioritising the process of image making. The day spent on set giving everyone full attention. Fashion imagery can disappear almost instantly now, but the act of photographing someone with real concentration slows everything down into a beautiful experience. Simone Weil’s idea that attention is the rarest form of generosity is central to the exhibition and its book. It’s the triangular relationship between us, the sitter and then the viewer encountering the work in the exhibition.

Inez & Vinoodh, Prince, 2013

LM: Which of your photographs would you like audiences to interact with most?

I&V: Probably the kiss works, especially the ‘Me Kissing Vinoodh’ series. The kiss is the emotional center of the exhibition: two people becoming one, presence and absence, love as something physical and almost impossible to contain in one image.

LM: Have you encountered any work recently, film, music, or otherwise that has left a lasting impression on you?

I&V: The documentary ‘Squaring the Circle’ by Anton Corbijn.

Inez & Vinoodh, Can Love Be a Photograph, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, published by Hannibal Books.

‘Can Love Be A Photograph’: 40 Years of Inez & Vinoodh is on show at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, 21 March – 6 September 2026