JT: Well, let me tell you how the show starts. I had to make an archi- tectural plan, of course, how you walk around it, and it starts with four photographs. One is of a photograph that my father took of me as a baby and when I discovered that picture I thought, it really could look like Iggy.

AI: I thought the same thing!

JT: Also, the way I photograph is how my father photographs. It’s direct. That’s the first photograph. The second photograph, I rephotographed a newspaper article from 1988 where my father killed himself. He killed him- self in a car and he drove against a tree and it’s the car crash and there’s a fireman and there’s a little text about it. It’s a heavy photograph and it’s going to be next to it. And then there’s a picture of my mum, kind of absurd, in a crocodile head, it’s about the horror of life but also the comi- cal side of life. And then next to it is a black and white photograph of me naked on my dad’s grave with a football and a cigarette and a beer. So this is the first thing you see in the show. It starts with me and my father’s suicide and I go really fast now, brrrrrrr, all around it, and it kind of ends up with our wedding and the pregnancy and we did this project called The Myth, did you see that?

AI: Yeah.

JT: With the legs up. And then the birth. And then we did this Iggy celebra- tion in Sicily that you unfortunately couldn’t come to, and that is wild. You can choose my dad’s way or to live. And I feel I really need to live. I need to live for my wife, for my kids, and for my work. I need to live. I thought it was a really powerful title!. But I really mean it sincerely. You have the re- sponsibility completely in your hands of where your life goes. This way or that way. That’s why I chose that title. We were working on this whole thing and I was ill again and I was struggling with the flu and I slightly felt better and we haven’t been drinking for a long time and I grabbed a cigarette to kind of feel alive again and Dovile kind of nagged me, ‘Don’t smoke!’ And

It’s a big deal. The show is a big deal. Life when you decide is a big deal. Life is good as a concept but then when you’re in it you have to decide every fucking day to survive it. Anne Imhof

I said, ‘I need to live! (laughs) I need to feel alive!’ And she immediately said, ‘Oh my god, that’s the title of your show’. And I thought, really? And then we thought about it and said YES.

AI: It’s a big deal. The show is a big deal. Life when you decide is a big deal. Life is good as a concept but then when you’re in it you have to decide every fucking day to survive it. I can relate to that there is a drive that also brings us to the dark side or there’s a side where I have to really make myself be alive. To create art is also a decision to do that.

JT: Yeah.

AI: It’s survival. It was the only way for me to survive was to become an artist.

JT: I understand.

AI: I think your decision to give the show that title, and the show, is a nar- ration of that. Each image is kind of a proof of being alive. Until Iggy and the celebration of a new life. When I looked at the floor plan of the show I loved the way you have arranged it. I read that you worked with an archi- tect that also built your studio.

JT: I really like Tom Emerson, the architect, and I’m super happy with my studio.

AI: It’s also knowing your work.

JT: Knowing my work, and he was able to listen to me with what I wanted out of the studio, and when I didn’t know what I wanted he was very sensitive to put some ideas across and it felt really good. We thought for a long time about how we were going to structure the whole thing. Thomas Weski, the curator, he’s also a very lovely man and very knowledgeable and very good, I was working with him for a long time on this project and I suddenly said to Tom Emerson, ‘Do you know what? All this stuff that we are doing, I don’t know, it’s not quite right, I kind of wanted a long wall, I wanted it to feel like a film, like a book where it goes on and on and on. Where there’s a beginning, there’s a middle and an end. Like a symphony, like a song.’ Not like, there’s a little box here, there’s a little box here, there’s something detached, some other project. I want it to feel fluid because I’m quite fluid – doing my person- al work, next week I’m doing some Saint Laurent stuff, then I photograph Dovile, duh-duh-duh, you know what I mean? That’s what I like and that’s my strength and that’s how we came to it. And that’s when he said, ‘Why don’t we just go, boom, boom, and then it actually ends up as a cross.’

AI: I find that having the space basically dissected two times, and you mimic the architecture but then you tilt it so it’s not quite symmetrical, but it still gives that huge space so people will walk back and forth, seeing the photographs almost like a strip. I find that super beautiful and smart because also you start with your life, and let’s say the last photograph you spoke about, that’s you on the grave of your dad and you have your foot on this football and you have a beer and a cigarette and you’re naked, this image is so strong for me and very touching. When I discov- ered it in the press release I thought it had something from this moment where you grabbed the cigarette and said, I’m alive and I’m breathing the air here and this is how to make it visible. There’s something in it – even though smoking is unhealthy – that makes that kind of pretty visible and then it’s a rebellious act, on the other hand it’s acknowledging that you’re fragile and vulnerable in your own self. I saw in the press release that you are also showing videos. I was interested in it because I don’t  know your video work so well. I looked at this one video you did, one with Kate Moss, reciting the text from Shannon Peckham, a beautiful text, and the video is called Can I Own Myself. It’s basically a question about us all. It questions actually how images are done, how they relate and where do they go and what they do to each other and who owns them. With that comes a whole political question mark as well. There’s one sentence, you go through the whole thing and it’s clear it’s about desire, it’s about images, and also in a way how Kate is delivering the text, as if she’s trying to understand and remember. (chuckles) And it’s beautiful the way she recites it. And then in the end she says, desire is always a desire for ownership. But some things can never be owned. I was very touched by this. On the one hand about the work itself, but also about your way of dealing with photography itself. The text says that the image can make another image as money can make more money, but it can also cancel each other out. In your career you make a lot of images and the core of this, what goes through them, for me, is this immense respect for the people you photograph. You photograph a lot of women. For me that is one thing that this work also speaks about, about her and her position and how she is relating to her own images and the images that are made for her and what they are creating again and whose de- sire it is and for whom it is. How you speak in your fashion photography about women, I find it a super singular way to make images. I know it’s not really a question but there is a way of involving women in your work that is specific to how you work, I think, like your iconic photographs, Kristen McMenamy, Björk with her son, Charlotte Rampling, these im- ages that are super iconic. I can’t get bored by hearing you talk about them. But now there’s also Dovile coming into your life. Can you talk a bit about this? What is the work you first did with Dovile and what did it feel like?

JT: In a way, Dovile does two things or she does everything. It first start- ed – she was living in New York and I was living here and I have my studio here now and I have two children here and everything and for me it was impossible, I didn’t want to go to New York. So it had to be that she come to London and she had to give up her job and had to give up, frankly, her life for me and I had her kind of jumping into the cold water. And she was like, ‘What am I going to do here? I’m not going to be a housewife, sitting in London doing nothing’. I kind of thought, I think maybe we could work together. At first on the business side. She got the business in a much better shape than it ever was. She is in a way my business partner, my creative partner, my agent, my everything.

AI: It started almost with a management perspective?

JT: Yes, that’s how it started. And little did we both know that I was able, I guess, through us being together, to unlock something in her, like her creative side and her sensitivity towards that. It was really interesting and I thought, I want to photograph her, but I couldn’t figure out a way of photographing her at the beginning because we were living our life together and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Some people you don’t need to know. You go there, you photograph them, you nail them, you do what you want to do with them. When something is so important to you, you don’t want to do a nice picture here or this or the other, it felt really com- plicated for me because it was frankly too important for me.

AI: Also, do you want to share that, you know? To make a picture in this way is also sharing your life with the public.

JT: Yes, so there is for example not really ever much of our house. I don’t show anything sort of private in a way. But then Dovile had this idea to go to Iran over Christmas. It was in 2019.

Dovile makes me more me, with everything. And of course, people at the beginning were like, whoa, what’s going on now? They thought I was theirs. And now suddenly we were together. Juergen Teller

AI: I remember that.

JT: We were there for two and a half weeks. I didn’t want to do any sort of tourist pictures in Iran, I didn’t know what to photograph, some Chinese tourist with long lenses photographing everything, the typical tourist stuff. And I photographed everything on an iPhone. You had to be dressed in a certain way, the coat below your knees and cover up your hair and things like that, and we had this Iranian guide, this woman, who was very, very good and very humorous, and we had this idea: what about wearing a chador? We discussed it with the guide, whether it was appropriate and so on and [Dovile] became this different person in this place and she also kept this appearance up and put on this black liner, how they have their make-up, and she was holding herself in a com- pletely different way. That was the first project we did together. For three days straight it felt like, that’s not my girlfriend anymore, it’s a different person. Also the way she behaved during the day. In the morning she put on that armour and we carried it around and when we went to bed she took it off and became herself again. That was a really beautiful mo- ment of us working together and through that strange diversion of this chador, everything fell into place and that was how I could suddenly pho- tograph however we wanted to photograph each other. And something broke free. And then we started doing these projects together.

AI: So you are actually creative partners know? What you describe, pho- tographing each other. Remember that shoot we did in Berlin which was also for Re-Edition? Dovile and you came and you said, ‘Oh, this is all too cool, the clothes are so cool and you are holding yourselves cool.’ It was mainly Balenciaga and it was me and Eliza, we felt a bit invincible as well and you said, ‘Hey, I want to shoot Dovile with you guys’, and you thought of this idea of having her naked in the pictures with us. And suddenly this whole thing twisted and became something completely different. And there I saw the two of you working together in this way.

JT: Yes, yes, yes.

AI: And it was very, very beautiful to see that because there was a very shared understanding of the authorship inside that thing. Inside of the moment of creation, let’s say, and I loved that. I love creating like that. It’s like having a band. No one can do something without each other.

JT: Yes, yes, yes.

AI: It was pulling me in. You guys basically decided on something that also allowed you to stay together. Because your life – you’re travelling a lot of the time and if you didn’t work together you would be separated from each other. When Eliza and I met each other it was a bit naïve. We did not know anything that was coming. Eliza was also saying to me, ‘You will do the German Pavilion’, long before I knew about it (laughs). But it was also a moment where we decided on working together, or she performed in my work, because we wanted to be together, period. And I see you and Dovile doing something quite daring, because people must have been like, what are they doing? Why is he questioning his whole career of decades? And you decided to work together the two of you and say no, it’s not something that takes away from this, it adds to it.

JT: Yes, I mean, Dovile makes me more me, with everything. And of course, people at the beginning were like, whoa, what’s going on now? They thought I was theirs. And now suddenly we were together. And I’m sure people questioned it a lot but it very quickly turned very convinc- ing that Dovile is extremely good psychologically. She studied political science and I’m amazed how she can talk to clients or people, for their good and for my good. I haven’t got a good example but she’s amaz- ingly sensitive about how to get things done. We just understand each other and sometimes I’m still shy and I have to say to her, ‘What about this?’ For example, we were in this hotel in the summer, we wanted to get pregnant and it was this beautiful hotel and I thought, ‘Why don’t you put your legs up’. I took this picture and I thought, ‘Oh my god, this looks so romantic, it looks so beautiful’. And then I had this idea, let’s go to every single hotel room they have, and they have 94 rooms, so me, my- self, I would have been too shy to talk to the hotel manager, like, ‘Hey, I want to go in all your rooms and...’ (chuckles) but Dovile has a way of explaining it and not even saying what we’re doing. They didn’t even ask. The only thing they asked was, we don’t want to see any violence. They gave us the whole hotel and we photographed a whole week in there. It was beautiful.

AI: Yeah, it’s very beautiful. It’s a very romantic work and I think it’s incredible how the two of you managed to keep each other safe in open- ing up your relationship like this to the public, also through the images. When you started photographing Dovile it also started something, I think. And it’s not easy to do that. Out of my experience people don’t really want that. Artists should be by themselves because they’re way easier to manipulate (chuckles).

JT: Yes!

AI: Whenever there’s a collaboration and people can’t really track any- more who’s who and what is owned by whom they get nervous about it. And also they get nervous about the power that’s unleashed by...

JT: I mean, we are much stronger now.

AI: Do you want to talk about the feeling of consent that you mentioned to me?

JT: Content. (laughs) You know, before you are always sort of anxious or looking for something. I just feel very... we both feel very content with each other. When you wake up in the morning, you feel good, you feel safe. You might have a shit day here or there or the work is complicated or something goes wrong. You know, that’s the normal stuff in life, but not to have any other desire for something else. That is incredibly beauti- ful what we did together with having Iggy. I’m nearly 60 years old and I was really questioning, do I need another child? Of course I don’t. And I’m older and I have two kids already. But it’s the best thing Dovile and I did. And I’m calmer now. I can see things from a more relaxed standpoint because I’m in a safe, excellent, good relationship. I can enjoy things. I can talk to Dovile about anything. We have conversations. We do boring things. We cook together, we work together. We have adventures to- gether. It’s so exciting doing things together. That’s what I mean by con- tent. Going to the market together, buying some fish. In the rain it can be a drag or when you’re doing it together it can be good. Everything really.

AI: Would you say you’ve kind of arrived somewhere?

JT: Yeah. Yes.

AI: I had to look up content because (chuckles) I have no recollection of hearing that or being affected by it. What does it mean? Oh, it means something like zufriedenheit [satisfaction] but not in this...

When Charlotte Rampling saw these self-portraits she suddenly woke up and said ‘Okay, wow, you’re doing this with yourself? Let’s go.’ So it completely opened doors for me with the brave. Juergen Teller

JT: Inner peace. Inner peace or something.

AI: Yeah, and that’s what I saw the first time I saw you together. There was some inner peace going on even though you were madly in love and crazy about each other and Iggy was not yet there and yet there was this peacefulness there. I remember you said something about you saw Dovile standing in a doorway, a threshold, one place to another, and you saw her and said, ‘This will change my life’.

JT: Dovile said that. I was standing there (chuckles) and she walked through and said this is going to change her life.

AI: Oh, that’s even better. I was also thinking, the thing we talked about at the beginning, the go-sees and these photos of the girls that came to your studio, on the threshold of the doorway, there is something about a threshold that is very meaningful in an image but also in life. And you go and step over something and sometimes you can’t go back. I was going through the images and I saw faces like Mariacarla, people that were babies back then but are now supermodels. I know her through Riccardo Tisci and when we did this Burberry campaign and fashion show during the pandemic and he asked you to do it. I think Riccardo also works amazingly intuitively. I think after you he was the person in fashion that became some kind of mentor to me, how he dealt with peo- ple, how respectfully he dealt with women, especially. I met Mariacarla there, in this forest, and somehow Riccardo and I stayed friends and he introduced me to all these people. It’s such a singular position you have because you also stayed friends with all of these people. It’s kind of an incredible achievement to do that and be this cross between a lot of lives and people. And it was also for me and Eliza an important moment to be shot together in this beautiful moment of a kiss, you know. And I think the show you have now brings a lot of these things together. And Paris must be for you like your second home.

JT: Yeah.

AI: And Anthony [Vaccarello] who is involved with Yves Saint Laurent and you have this friendship and collaboration.

JT: I love working with Anthony because he is so precise of what he wants. And I’m really thankful he’s supporting my show. Tomorrow we go to Steidl, to Göttingen, and we print five books. Four new books and a catalogue for it. We’re going to be there all week in Göttingen, working on it.

AI: Steidl, when I met him at your wedding, I thought he was the scariest man I’ve ever met (laughs)

JT: (laughs)

AI: I just said ‘Hey, hi’, because I knew who he was. He was just staring at me, in this, who are you kind of way, you know? (chuckles) I know that you’ve been working with him for so many years and I read that you did 40 books in 20 years which is insane. This show is kind of like a huuuuge book that’s unfolding all over the Grand Palais. But there will also be books in the show, right?

JT: We are making 50 vitrines, so what’s not on the wall will be on differ- ent stages of the place and there will be also within the vitrines new figu- rations where I’ve conceptualised certain things together again. Other things will be certain books that I have laid out, so yeah, 50 vitrines, that’s fucking a lot. They’re all wood and have little.... Beine – legs! We painted [the legs] fluorescent pink, which is like my pink shorts kind of thing. I think you haven’t seen everything yet. I will show five videos.

AI: Can you say something about the video works?

JT: One is me being filmed for 94 minutes watching the World Cup final, Germany against Brazil. And we’re losing two-nil and it’s sort of devas- tating and it gets worse and worse and worse and by the end of it it sort of reminds me of my aggressive dad because I’m screaming against the television, ‘What the fuck, what the fuuuuck are you doing!’

AI: I love that.

JT: How I show the go-sees is kind of a pavilion where it’s a three-part projection where one go-see comes up and the next one comes up and the next one, so they’re coming and going on three screens.

AI: This is beautiful. Like a slideshow.

JT: Yeah, and on three different screens. Because I’ve showed these go-sees as they are as photographs many times I wanted to think of something else. And then opposite, which is like this pavilion, I made a go-see movie which is half an hour.

AI: Is it original camera takes from back then?

JT: It is. First for a year I did the pictures and then I thought, oh my god, this is so good, I wish I would have filmed also, so three months later after I had the book I did a movie about it. It’s half an hour long, done with this sort of cheap video cassette tape at the time.
AI: Oh wow, this is amazing.

JT: Yes, and I ask the models questions – it’s the same, on the door and coming a step in and coming out – and I ask them certain questions and then I gave them a chance to have the camera and film me and ask me questions. I wanted to be democratic about it.

AI: Can you say a question you would ask them?

JT: Uh, I can’t remember now. (Pause) Not off the top of my head, I can’t.

AI: Do you remember a question they asked you?

JT: You will see in the video (Chuckles) It’s a very enjoyable piece of half an hour, I would say. And I had long hair and a super moustache.

AI: It’s so present in your work, yourself in the image. There is a notion of self-portraiture in every image you create, I think, as an artist. It’s a self-portraiture within the picture you’re creating. Long before selfies. Photographing yourself has become a term that’s basically written in the machinery of digital image making.

JT: You know how it really started? It’s when I photographed certain models and actors and actresses where I suddenly sensed that at that moment I kind of didn’t want to deal with any neuroses of vanity any- more. I thought, well, how does it feel like to be photographed by me? How is it? And what can I learn from it and where can I go with it? And then I’m like, well, I’m curious what it’s going to look like. It was a really important step for me when I started these self-portraits and immediately I felt – you know, I started actually at my mum’s place in the countryside, in the forest, and I didn’t have an assistant so I had my school friends. I called them up and said ‘Hey, can you come over and help me with some things?’

AI: Can you recall what year it was?

JT: 2000, I think. I just said, hold the camera like this, lean it a little bit over there and go a bit closer and do this and this. I felt like I know what the lens is doing, how I’m sitting, how I’m doing, I felt immediately, that doesn’t feel good. And I knew when I’m doing this, this is going to be a good picture. Go a little bit further away, do this and this. I had a good sense of the environment, what the camera does and how I would feel when instinctively it works. And also how far I could go with my own self. When Charlotte Rampling saw these self-portraits she suddenly woke up and said ‘Okay, wow, you’re doing this with yourself? Let’s go.’ So it completely opened doors for me with the brave. You see what I mean?

AI: Was that a reason why she agreed to be in those pictures? It was a campaign shoot, no?

JT: It was for Marc Jacobs in the beginning. Then I wanted to go on further.

AI: Because it doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with clothes (chuck-les).

JT: No, that’s the next project I did.

AI: Okay.

JT: It started with a little bit of clothes and then I asked her to continue. And then we did a project which lasted for about six months.

AI: It’s incredible that you imagine yourself within the picture. Behind the camera and in front of the camera. I can relate a lot to... in the beginning when I didn’t have people to work with I only had myself. I also was a young mum, I was like 20 and I had Zoe. I did music and at night when she was in bed I was doing my art. I was filming myself a lot performing but I had the feeling I could do whatever with myself. I could be cruel, I could be romantic, I could be nice, I could make myself look bad, I could make myself look good.

JT: Or humorous or funny, ugly or beautiful, anything. That was for me a complete eye opener.

AI: ‘Cause you’re not asking that from someone else. You’re asking it from yourself.

JT: Yeah, complete control, exactly. So that helped me a lot. And then it helped other people who started to work with me a lot to understand. And then I did another video of – also, you know this picture, with Charlotte is playing the piano.

AI: And you’re lying on the grand piano.

JT: That’s when I thought, how is this when it’s moving? So I did a video of it. She plays the piano and I’m (chuckles) really moving around. I like it. AI: You’re a dancer too.

JT: (laughs)

AI: I mean, you’re kind of relentless with yourself. Because not all of your images that you’re in look particularly flattering.

JT:No.

AI: I think it makes it into something – well, you said it, it helps people who work with you to accept this moment, to see yourself from the outside. I was with you in a moment where I said, ‘You can’t take this picture of me, I look shit’. You yourself (chuckles) look like shit in some of the pictures, you know. There’s a beauty in this, accepting that we are these creatures of habit and if people are used to seeing other people in poses that look very flattering to them, like the whole pop industry and the fashion in- dustry, it’s the world that you work in but you established something that carves out a small space of freedom in there. When you are there and say, ‘Hey, this is how it’s supposed to be, I don’t want to have that person retouched or look like every other picture’, people accept it. And I know it took you a long time. You weren’t right there from the start. You had to know that you can accept yourself to be in an image and not be perfect. I know that you collaborated with Boris Mikhailov, and I also saw that the curator you’re working with, Thomas Weski, that he has done [William] Eggleston in the past and you are a fan of Eggleston.

JT: Yes.

AI: I was thinking of the Boris pictures especially because he is a figure that brought this also to the world, in another field.

JT: Yes, yes.

AI: Can you talk about how you came across Boris’ work?

JT: Funnily enough, it was at Steidl. And Steidl was not the publisher, he was only the printer. There used to be a Swiss publisher called Scalo where Nan Goldin and all these people published books. And he pub- lished my Go-see book. I was at Steidl, and it’s this brick and it’s 480 pages and at the same time Boris Mikhailov was there, through Scalo, but printed at Steidl and he published Case History, which is the same size and also 480 pages, and that’s where I met him and his wife, Vita. And when I looked at Case History it blew my mind. Like, what the fuck is this? This is so hardcore this work, it’s incredible. And I like him a lot and I liked his wife a lot.

AI: How much older than you is he?

JT: 82, 83, maybe? And over the years we became friends and we had three exhibitions together. 85, he is. One in Venice and one in Holland and whatever.

AI: It was the Ukrainian Pavilion, right?

JT: Yes. But what was in the back of my mind is this strong relationship they have together, Vita and Boris. They agree on things and they argue about things, but they do everything together. They work together. He photographs her and somehow – not obviously – but it was somehow in the back of my mind that I would love to have something like that. And I found that in Dovile. And the beautiful thing is that we visit them some- times in Berlin. We just went to their opening in Rome and Dovile speaks Russian so they talk to each other in Russian the whole time. Vita speaks to me in English and Boris speaks to me a little bit in English but the whole conversation goes – they’re completely in love with Dovile.

AI: Not only them (laughs)
JT: It’s a wonderful friendship we have together. I think it has a lot to do with my braveness of saying [to Dovile], ‘Why don’t we work together?’ It must have been at the back of my mind, this thing of what Boris and Vita have.

AI: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And also his way of looking at the world. His pictures are incredible.

And I thought, ‘Fuck, it’s an Eggleston photograph’. You see? It’s beautiful. I couldn’t do what you do and you couldn’t do what I do. It’s magic. Juergen Teller

JT: His pictures are really heavy but he also has this incredible sense of humour and it’s something we have very much in common because some of my work is really heavy but it’s also really tragic and humorous, so I find myself very close to him and he me.

AI: And what is it about Eggleston? He’s the godfather of colour photog- raphy and he photographed at a moment in America where early capital- ism consumerism was obviously in the images and also something that started to rule daily life.

JT: He also influenced completely what Hollywood movies look like.

AI: Yeah, you’re right. Did he work with lights? Because a lot of his works were outside. I remember when we were shooting you used the light that was there and then placed lights, but sometimes you place lights but in a way that you wouldn’t use them in the traditional sense of good lighting.

JT: Yes, yes. But mostly I think he uses just natural light. There are some instances in some series he did where he has a flash on. I’ll tell you a kind of beautiful story, because we are extremely fond of each other and we went on a couple of road trips together. For me it was incredible. I met him in Memphis, an American magazine asked me to photograph him, I can’t remember what magazine it was. And we just got on so well, without say- ing much, but we spent a lot of time together. I spent three days with him in Memphis and then at the end of it he says (puts on old time American accent), ‘Juergen, do you wanna go on a road trip with me to Bavaria?’ I was like, god, this is fucking brilliant! Eggleston, go on a road trip, to where I’m from. This is fucking insane! And literally three-four weeks later, we were in Bavaria, driving around. It was insane. It was absolutely incred- ible. I was in such heaven being with him. We both didn’t take a single photograph. It was completely stupid, I wish I would have. But then what I really wanted to say was, we were sitting on a park bench on the day when I asked him to be the male model for the Marc Jacobs campaign and we were next to the Eiffel Tower. We both had the cameras around our necks, we both had the Contax G2 and the same lens, and we were both sitting on the park bench and I turn around, and I’m like, ‘Bill, this is just an Eggleston picture, right there!’ And he looked over, smoked a cigarette, ‘Juergen, you’re right!’, got up, click, one click, and sat down again. And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, now that I’ve actually seen the Eggleston photograph, I’m going to do my own Eggleston photograph’. So I got up and did a photograph and I thought, let’s do it 15 times just to make sure I get it, and I came home and I thought, ‘I’ve got a William Eggleston photograph myself!’ I developed the film, looked on the light box because I was shooting still film, had the negative, and I looked at it and looked at it and looked at it, and it just wasn’t quite there. A couple of months later had a show at the Fondation Cartier because he got commissioned to photograph Paris, so over a period of two years, back and forth, he was roaming around Paris. He invited me to the opening and I go there and he stands at the staircase. (does Eggleston’s accent) ‘Juergen, I was waiting for you. I want to show you something.’ And he grabs my arm, pulls me downstairs in the gallery and there was this photograph of what I’ve seen. And I thought, ‘Fuck, it’s an Eggleston photograph’. You see? It’s beauti- ful. I couldn’t do what you do and you couldn’t do what I do. It’s magic.

AI: It’s beautiful. It’s also, everybody takes it in in a different way. We are all so different from each other. There’s sometimes this panic about who owns what, which is so ridiculous because we all have our own beautiful minds. I think that your work – I was writing all of this, look (shows writing)

JT: That’s an art piece already!

AI: I can send it to you. You can put it in your bathroom. (chuckles)

JT: Yeah, please! (laughs)

AI: What I was thinking was, what can I say about it. The poem I wrote for my first piece, a kind of poem that I wanted somebody to say, and it was, what was it... Ah yeah, ‘What do we do, friend, if we haven’t done anything to each other yet?’ It was for me this idea of like, you are with a person in a room or with many people, and there is this moment of the life in my work, in your works, that crystallises to be a photo in the end, and all around this moment, this moment where you enter a space together and you are there and nothing has happened yet. The potency or the potential of that. And the beautiful idea of it can go any direction. And somehow staying in there. Somehow I feel the beauty of this moment in a lot of your works. None of us know how the show is going to be or what it’s going to do to people but a lot of people will see it. A lot of young people will see it. Us back then, like you seeing photographs that inspired you. I think you are a very inspiring figure to a lot of people. Also for me. And I’m so happy this happens, the show is going to be there and that people are going to see this strip of art and life mixed up. I love that.

JT: Good. Your show in Paris was totally powerful too.

AI: Oh, thank you. It might have been the show I bled over the most, too.

JT: I can imagine. That was brilliant. It was really, really powerful.

AI: There’s mostly a lot of pain when something like this happens too, you know. At least with me there’s always that threshold I have to cross.

JT: Oh yeah, it’s hard work. (chuckles)
AI: Do you want to talk about anything else?

JT: Hang on, I’ve just got to go to the bathroom.

AI: Dovile, are you still there?

DD: I am.

AI: Shall we continue? (laughs) Come over! What do you think? Are we done?

DD: I think it’s great guys! I don’t know, you’ve been talking for two hours.

AI: Oh my god, really?

DD: You guys have things to say to each other. Amazing. I think it will be interesting to read. I’m listening with one ear but I think it will be great. I love this kind of fluent conversation you guys are having.

AI: I like it to be us just talking rather than me posing questions.

DD: I think it’s nice to hear your thoughts and connect to him. I think it’s better than just question, question, question. It’s a conversation, I really like that.

AI: Quick question to you: how was it for you to do the first work with Juer- gen? How did you feel?

DD: I think it was very strange because I could understand, you know, a bit like what he said and what you said, artists are meant to be alone, or not ‘meant’, but if they’re alone they’re supposed to stay alone. And for whatever reason it’s not acceptable.

AI: The art world is for sure one world where it is difficult to establish.

DD: Yeah, very unforgiving. If you decide to change something, I think a lot of times you are asked or you’re pushed or you’re expected to go back. It doesn’t matter if your work becomes better – or maybe not bet- ter, but more interesting or different or there’s movement towards, you know, it’s not a stale thing – I just think it’s challenging. I think we were both just lucky or we were just meant to have this. But from the beginning it was very hard. We’ve just somehow managed to, you know – we stuck together. He has this obligation to the world to give his talent, share his talent, same as you as an artist, you guys have an obligation to the world to continuously, alone or with a partner or a collaborator, just continuously giving your talents and energy to the world. It can be hard but you have no choice, I would say.

AI: And on the other hand it’s a big privilege, I feel.

DD: Yeah.

AI: Doing what I think is right or doing the best I can. But just put it out there. But Dovile, I think there’s also a big part of the story where you couldn’t go back. As Juergen said, you left your life and that was the step.

DD: Yes, yes, yes!

JT: Also, it’s interesting what we said before. I realise now, with the strength of what we have together, how easily people could manipulate me without me even realising it. Little things. Now this is not happening anymore because I have protection from her. And that’s really interesting. And I was going along with it, but they were doing it for their own good, for their own reasons.

AI: With you Dovile, there’s also your talent in that. There’s something where people question if there’s true collaboration going on, it’s danger- ous. I felt sometimes with my own relationship, that Eliza and I, for ex- ample this whole dark romcom that we lived out in public, it also was like fucking true to who we were. Everything was laid out. On the other hand, I felt like it had a lot of integrity, myself and what I was doing, because there was also somebody there who – what we did with each other, we knew each other very well. Our own artistic practice had to go through each other. She was the first judgement or I was the first judgement. And it was relentless or not easy to sometimes negotiate that, basically on a plate, seen by some sort of public eye.

DD: I think it’s a different level what we have and what you and Eliza have. It’s too complicated for people to understand. It’s too far away. I mean, I get it. I think to understand love and this really big commitment and very pure energy, I think it’s very difficult.

AI: When I met Juergen, it was always my dream to have everything. It was my dream to live the thing that is also my work. There were no boundaries. That was harmful for me too, because I had no boundaries. Everything could also go in. Everybody could ask everything of me. It was crazy to me that then I had to learn how to do that in a way, because it also allowed the work to be what it is. And then it became something beautiful. I still think this porousness and the boundarylessness that is in the work also allows it to be what it is. Maybe I had no different choice. But what I see with you, and when I see that you create the safe space with each other, because Juergen, I see you pouring yourself into your work, and when you’re there together, you’re all in, the two of you. And now there’s Iggy!

JT: We did a brilliant project. Did you see this project? Iggy Pop, for Docu- ment magazine. We liked him, we call Iggy Iggy because of that. The magazine hears about it and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, you called your daughter Iggy because of this shoot we commissioned. She’s gotta be on the cover.’ I’m thinking, this is just embarrassing. Everybody has cute pictures of their baby and to have this cute little, nice, dee-dee-lee-dee, sweet picture of a baby, I’m going to look like an idiot, I’ve got to think of something. And we thought, ah, Iggy Teller does Teller. She restages some of my iconic photographs. And it was so much fun.

AI: A good collaborator.

JT: Yeah. This is very much at the end of the show.

AI: So this is kind of how the circle closes.

JT: Yes, yes, and then they come back alive through this new world. And I will have one new video but I will have that as a surprise.

AI: Okay. I’m happy we did this. JT: Me too. Very much so.
AI: Shall we stop? Are we done. JT: Yeah.

DD: I thought it was great you guys. My computer says low battery so you have to stop!