Packaging Beauty and Compressed Shapes

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have always pushed the boundaries of fashion photography and with their latest editorial for V, they have worked with stylist Panos Yiapanis and artist Paddy Hartley.  Hartley’s one of a kind plexiglass face corsets, make the models look like packaged meat products.

Sleeping with a meat-muslin mask would keep you young.

According to 1930’s The Art of Feminine Beauty by Helena Rubinstein, beef could provide a fabulous facial: “Cut pieces of paper—a strip to cover the forehead, another for cheeks, chin, and a thin narrow strip for the nose. Give your pattern to the butcher, who will cut the meat accordingly. Leave openings around the eyes and lips. Pack the meat over your skin and secure it with a strip of muslin. Leave it on one to two hours or overnight if possible.”

Hartley has received international acclaim for a series of face corsets focused on exploring attitudes towards plastic surgery and ideals of facial beauty.  The bioglass and cinching invoke Botox, collagen, implants and other techniques that stretch and compress faces into their proposed ideal shape – but only temporarily. Hartley elaborates on these ideas and more in an excellent interview over at We Make Money not Art.

When design specialisms collide

Photographers Van Lamsweerde and Matadin have also worked collaboratively with Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak who make up the graphic design company M/M (Paris).  Their line illustrations are especially effective over photographs and the invitation to Balenciaga Fall-Winter 2001-2 show (shown at the top of the page) is an exciting indictment of the collaborative magic that can happen when design specialisms collide.

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

A new take on face masks and cosmetic indulgence by the design duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, photographers from the Nederlands. These photos were in the October 2006 Visionaire magazine. This is only a selection of photos of the “Decades” Series.