In The Nipple the viewer is immediately confronted by the book’s cover of Juergen Teller’s mask-wearing nude subject. The image, notably shot pre-pandemic, acts as an allusion to the ever precarious nature of our mortal bodies. In his iconically casual style, Teller continues to allude to the body by pointing us to unused and uncared for exercise equipment on empty European city streets. Eventually this repetition is punctuated by a personal element, the artist himself undergoing an endoscopic medical procedure, perhaps routine but possibly more serious. When not isolating the human body itself, he gives us devastated proxies for it: an unworn dinosaur costume inert and wrinkled on the floor, a desiccated frog that’s fallen victim to roadkill, a lifeless fish on dirty ground many days since its last gasp. By contrasting images of weakness and desolation with those of bodily vitality, Teller foreshadows brilliantly the isolation and tension that, at the time of printing, were still yet to come.
TBW Books : Annual Series No. 7 | Four Book Set
Carmen Winant | Body Index
Juergen Teller | The Nipple
Mona Kuhn | Study
Paul Kooiker | Business Of Fashion
Hardcover
8.75 x 11 in.
ISBN: 978-1-942953-44-9
