An Exhibition of Juergen Teller's Soccer Photography Opens in Moscow, Just in Time for the World Cup
Juergen Teller has a frank and unusual approach to fashion photography: one day he’s stark naked spooning Charlotte Rampling on a floor of a hotel suite in Paris, the next he’s capturing the reclusive Joan Didion in badass sunglasses for Céline. But a less-exposed side of the German-born provocateur-that of the fanatical soccer fan-will be on view at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow from June 8, just in time for the World Cup, which is being held this summer in 11 cities across Russia.
Teller’s soccer photos in the exhibition titled “Juergen Teller: Zittern auf dem Sofa” zoom way past the pitch, focusing on his personal connection to the sport. We see him and his family watching the game on TV, twisting their faces in hope and terror; or a star struck Teller arm-in-arm with the Brazilian legend Pélé.
One series, “Naked on the Football Field,” is startlingly confessional: Teller is shown, completely nude, standing atop his father’s grave while smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, and balancing one foot on a soccer ball. It’s an homage, he says, to his hard-living, sports-hating musician dad, who committed suicide in 1988. “I think I took the photograph to feel closer to him. To try to understand the things we had in common, and the things that kept us apart. Football was certainly one of those things that kept us apart.”
The World Cup arrives in Russia at a moment when relations between the Kremlin and the West are at their lowest level since the Cold War. Teller thinks that, while national rivalry is certainly a part of the game-the players, he says, are "modern-day gladiators duking it out on the world stage”-it’s important not to confuse a country’s team with its government. “Football fans belong to a different nationality, one that crosses borders.”
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