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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"I don't really know how much we have to say about the sex in our work," Pierre says softly in French when I tell him the section this conversation is headed for. He seems apologetic, not perturbed.
I can't help imagining that the process of making the pictures is as pleasurable as they are to behold. "Our photographs and life are mixed together, so sometimes it does feel like the pictures," Pierre admits. "They come from what we feel for the models and the settings. We photograph people whom we know and love, and certain moments in our life that we'd like to express -- things that we find are beautiful but also potentially cruel."
"We idealize the people we take pictures of," Gilles adds, "but behind that, their own energy comes through. We show the world as it is, but through a poetic eye."
The artists have evolved a workable means of producing their labor-intensive pictures, artisan style, in their home and studio in the suburbs of Paris. They live on the upper floor and have their studio in the basement -- like a micro version of a Hollywood studio in a residential neighborhood. Though both admit to the youthful influence of Tinseltown narrative and design magic, they don't appear to be caught up in it. Nor do their neighbors. "The neighbors peek out when stars show up for a shoot," Gilles says, "but people don't pay us much note. It's France, after all."
While they conceive the images together, Pierre is more of a photographer and shoots the black-and-white and color shots that serve as their base images, while Gilles is the painter who touches up the pictures with pastel-colored dots that create the illusion of sparkles. "We do everything ourselves," they say. That includes constructing the elaborate sets of forests, ice palaces or heavenly fields of grass, setting up the lights and posing their models.
They're on record for their lack of interest in digital set building or retouching. "We like to work hands-on," Pierre says. "We like for the model to be in the middle of the set. There are more surprises, like in theater. It takes longer but it's more real for us."
They also create their own special effects. In a 1997 piece, for example, they grafted the head of rocker chanteuse Siouxsie Sioux onto the body of an eagle. They also manage more adult illusions. In a directly erotic 1996 image, a strapping nude lad reclines in forest brambles, his head and torso "splattered by the photo stylist's equivalent of semen." Or so writes curator Dan Cameron in the show's catalog.
What's the real makeup secret? "There were 10 guys there jerking off over him," Pierre jests, the ribald subject matter adding a bit of energy to his otherwise demure delivery.
"It's actually something improvised," Gilles interjects. "Johnny was originally meant to be a beautiful young thug, but he turned into something more vulnerable. It's fake cum, just something we concocted. I think we used shampoo."
"There's a sensuality to the process of making the pictures, from the beginning to the end. From thinking of the idea, taking the picture, the whole process, even up until the framing," Gilles explains.
Process is also a word that applies to maintaining couple status, especially in the gay world, where there are few stable role models. These two have been together for 25 years, though they don't see themselves as lifestyle icons. "Our work is important to our relationship," Gilles says. "We're very different from each other, but we need and respect each other. We don't hide anything from each other."
"Sure we have conflicts over artwork," Pierre adds. "There's competition between us, but that's what makes it good. Some models Gilles wants, some models I want. Ultimately we get both. In the end we find a way to agree."
Pierre et Gilles are currently finding ways to agree while putting together an exhibition of pictures they've made over the past three years, a show scheduled to open in Paris this fall. It will include, they say, pieces that are darker and more mythological than their earlier works. "It will express a lot of different emotions," the two tell me, in unison. Somehow I expect that all those feelings will manage to look fabulous.
