A LOVE LETTER TO.... ALL OF US.
Paris, December 2025
Humankind is the integral element in every image by Dutch photographers INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE and VINOODH MATADIN. Few have captured its essence like an ecstatic rush of energy, a transformational fuelling force, weaving itself extraordinarily throughout the duo's iconic portraits and fashion photography, emotively grounded in intimacy and immediacy, exploring inner sense and perspective, from desire and seduction to loss and identity – often their work illuminates not just what’s seen, but what’s also longed for.
Partners in life and art, their experimental images have broken with convention and transgressed boundaries, blurring gender roles and subverting societal notions of physical perfection. The first to explore digital manipulation back in the 1990s, when computer technology in image making was in its emergence, their distortion of the body has taken us on a journey into fantasy, the surreal, the unsettling, and reinvention, always questioning what is real and what is fake, leaving interpretation up to the viewer – a tale of the unexpected.
Having met at the Fashion Academy in their native Amsterdam, where they studied fashion design, 2026 sees their forty-year legacy celebrated in a retrospective CAN LOVE BE A PHOTOGRAPH, at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
In a preview to the show, the pair have unveiled images from a new project THINK LOVE, at India Mahdavi's Project Room #21 in Paris, a deeply introspective series featuring the couple's son, Charles Matadin and his girlfriend, Natalie Brumley, shot on an iPhone 17 Pro.
Captured outdoors in Marfa, Texas, a wildly vast landscape, which evokes immersion into both the fragility of solitude and nature, a red veil and acetate both intervene to unfold a visually poetic ode to the euphoric language of love, togetherness and preservation. Having shot some of the world's most enduring imagery, this latest work from the duo is a timely reminder of the importance of passion and protection, for humanity and the environment around us.
Below, Inez takes us behind the stories for THINK LOVE.
THINK LOVE, Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, Archival Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, Marfa, Van horn + Jeff Davis County, Texas, August 4-5, 2025
I wondered what drew you to the idea of setting this celebration of love and intimacy within nature, and why you chose Marfa?
We travelled to Marfa, Texas with our son Charles Matadin and his girlfriend, Natalie Brumley, to shoot these works because we needed to offset their intimacy, their complete loss and fusion into each other, against a vast empty landscape. It serves to sort of emphasise even more how beautiful their relationship is and the idea of a love that is completely immersive. Nature, on top of that, is very important, as we realise that their generation (they’re both 21 and 22 years old), focuses primarily on nature for inspiration, but also on the will to preserve our world. As artists they both look mostly outward instead of our generation of artists who tend to look inward drawing inspiration from their own inner demons, traumas or experiences. We are noticing that their generation is focused primarily on the world, their place in it, and specifically on how to emphasise nature, its beauty and the need for preserving it.
THINK NATURE, Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, Archival Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, Marfa, Van horn + Jeff Davis County, Texas, August 4-5, 2025
It's so wonderful how that translucent piece of red fabric in some of the images, completes the narrative, it’s like the couple are encased in their own love bubble. It adds an extra layer of fantasy and surreality. Was that the intention?
The red veil holds the lovers in their own bubble, separate from everything around them but at the same time it emphasises their closeness and intimacy - their own private space. It is also the colour of love, the colour of passion, the colour of danger, the colour of blood. Red has so many very vibrant connotations both in art history and in life.
In the third picture called Think Nature, Natalie is holding up a red acetate; Red being the colour of stop signs. It is a protest mark. It is a signal to say, "This is urgent! We need to take care of nature. We need to take care of each other." That’s why she’s on top of his shoulders. That pose in that picture also references the movie poster of the Antonioni film, Zabriskie Point, which deals with two young rebels that seek refuge in the barren landscape of Death Valley. It sort of holds the same idea of this younger generation bringing our attention to nature and to preservation as a rebellious act.
Left Charles Matadin, Artist b. 2003, Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, Archival Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, Marfa, Van horn + Jeff Davis County, Texas, August 4-5, 2025
Right Natalie Brumley, Artist b. 2004, Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, Archival Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, Marfa, Van horn + Jeff Davis County, Texas, August 4-5, 2025
You've always radically engaged with technology, making those spontaneous, improvisational exchanges which have defined your process in using digital manipulation. You shot the portraits for this series on an iPhone 17 Pro Max – do you think the device helped to heighten the intimacy, versus having a gigantic crew of people around you, enabling you to capture those tender and human moments?
Shooting this on the iPhone 17 pro Max was an incredible experience. It allowed for more ease and a greater sense of intimacy. By removing the hassle of equipment, tripods and all that kind of stuff, we had the freedom to choose this subject of extreme closeness and to shoot it in the least intrusive way. That’s why the iPhone was so perfect for this. There was essentially no barrier - no lens, no equipment between us and our subjects. We could react very fast. We could improvise quickly which is always a large part of our general way of working. The camera in the iPhone is now of such high-quality that it exceeded our expectations regarding every possible photographic challenge that could arise. Naïvely we had this idea of two people returning to paradise, leaving the city and going on the road towards their future in nature, underneath this red veil. Technically speaking, the backlight, a red veil and skin underneath, pulling focus through the veil . . . all these things are very difficult to do for any camera, and the iPhone camera nailed it perfectly.
Apple was the ideal partner for this, especially because of their HDR technology. We are so accustomed to using the phone randomly and freely without paying too much attention to the framing etc, but because this was a different type of project, we really forced ourselves to bring the same level of detail and focus and framing while holding the iPhone as we would with our regular camera on any other set. Right now, I think people usually say "Oh, that’s amazing quality... for an iPhone!”, but we’re saying it’s amazing quality... for a CAMERA.
THINK HUMAN, Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, Archival Pigment Print on Fine Art Paper, Marfa, Van horn + Jeff Davis County, Texas, August 4-5, 2025
This show is a preview to your retrospective at Kunstmuseum Den Haag next year. It’s so important for everyone to keep seeing photography exhibitions, to preserve the works of iconic visual pioneers like yourselves, and I imagine your retrospective will be like an autobiography – I know you can’t say much just now, but I wonder, has it been challenging making the decisions of the works that will appear?
The show at India Mahdavi's Project Room is very special because it is the first time she shows photography, and yes, a little teaser of our upcoming retrospective in March 2026. That will span 40 years of work, curated by us and Willemijn van der Zwaan, the photo-curator of the museum. It has been a year of looking at our 40-year archive and understanding which thematics would come bubbling up to the surface, and which works would most strongly relate to them. Most importantly for us is that we took "time" out of the experience. It is full of history, but time is not important as we show works from all different decades next to each other grouped by theme, and not chronology.
Exhibition view ©Thierrydepagne
When you look back at your work, do you now see many different meanings, and that what you were doing back then pre-photoshop back in the 1990s, was really mind-opening, and how does it make you feel now?
The computer has always been a big part of our work. We are fascinated by its scope of possibilities. We have been working with it since 1991, exploring all its potentials and its pitfalls. It has been an incredible tool for us specifically as the idea of the real vs the unreal is such a prevalent and recurring theme in our work. We love that with a computer; we can change the perception of photography as reflecting reality and can disrupt this idea of "capturing the moment" by going back into it after we’ve taken the picture. We have another chance on the decisive moment once we have it in the computer and start playing with it.
Secondly, an important part of our work is showing an inner state, a psychological condition on the surface. What we try to do is comprised of altering the body - the surface, to show something that’s happening on the inside: Psych morphia. Manipulating the surface creates an endlessly fascinating image because you can’t really pinpoint what it is that draws you into to these pictures, what is so unsettling, because you still perceive photography as a reflection of reality. The computer is what allows us to change that idea. We are fascinated by dualistic forces; that pull between the grotesque and the beautiful, the exquisite and the mundane, the surreal and the actual. We fetishise skin, texture, and details. We are endlessly fascinated by all the humans in front of our lens. We believe, and in response to your last question, the camera, and taking pictures is a way of holding on to all the people we love – the people we are inspired by. That is why this exhibition is called Can Love Be A Photograph. It shows everyone that’s been with and around us since the beginning. We hope to hold on to them forever. They are seen, appreciated, and we show their worth all in that tiny, heightened moment-of-being that is reflected back through our lens. Our exchange with this person is what makes us tick. It’s what makes us able to work for 40 years, and hopefully for 40 more.
'Think Love’ is on view until 12th December 2025, at India Mahdavi’s Project Room #21, Paris.
Interview by Kate Lawson