“We were almost in a dream state making the work,” say photographer Zoë Ghertner and make-up artist Thomas de Kluyver of their haunting new book
Waking up from a dream and instantly forgetting it is the strangest of feelings. You know you’ve experienced something but you can’t quite grasp what it was, or indeed, what your subconscious might’ve been trying to hash out while you slept. It’s this slippery state, and the shifting nature of our internal worlds, that forms the subject of Zoë Ghertner and Thomas de Kluyver’s hauntingly beautiful new book, already past and already again there, which launches this week at Librairie Yvon Lambert in Paris.
Shot over the course of three years, the project is the result of a free-flowing collaboration between the globally renowned photographer and make-up artist, who first met on the set of a shoot nine years ago. “I think we immediately saw eye to eye,” Ghertner recalls. Capturing her mostly female subjects in a stripped-back style, often in the bracing elements of nature, the quiet power of the American photographer’s work has seen her become one of the most in-demand creatives in fashion today. Sharing a similarly human touch, Australian-born De Kluyver’s imperfection-bearing artistry has pushed forward a new frontier in beauty that values raw expression over polished glamour. “We have gone on to do many shoots and really built up this distinct language to the work that we make together,” says De Kluyver. “There’s this mutual trust, and a mutual understanding of beauty.”
Outside of their busy schedules shooting countless magazine covers and work for brands like Chanel, Miu Miu, Hermès, Simone Rocha and Gucci Beauty – where De Kluyver holds the position of global beauty artist – the pair started meeting up to create personal work together. “We didn’t really set out to make a book, it kind of unfolded as we kept going and going, following our gut desire to create together without an end,” Ghertner says. “After three years, it finally feels right to share this work and compile it into a printed object.”
The book features artists, friends, friends of friends and models the pair “love and are inspired by”, brought into the fold by casting director Rachel Chandler (co-founder of the New York-based modelling agency, Midland Agency). “It’s a mix of people that felt very special to us,” De Kluyver explains. Shot at a close-up range against textures of concrete, soil and wood, senses are heightened in Ghertner’s dreamlike staging, where the warmth of the sun is drunk in with closed eyes or the dampness of earth is felt beneath bare skin. Offsetting these scenes with a lightning bolt of the surreal, De Kluyver’s make-up forces you to look twice; coating eyelashes in shocking red, dotting a palm with a strange map of snaking patterns, and brushing the sole of a foot with iridescent eyeshadow. These flashes of the fantastical hint at something unseen within their subjects – where a stirring private thought is made material, or a daydream comes to life on the skin.
“We feel each of the images is like a different emotion or dream, and that the book takes you on a journey into our world,” explains the make-up artist. “Yes, Thomas is right, I think, in mentioning dreams,” Ghertner adds. “A dream is something you experience but can’t quite explain. We were almost in a dream state making the work. It was about being free and allowing the work to come to us. A bit like Kerouac’s spontaneous prose or a jazz improv.” This sense of freedom extended to their models too. “All of our subjects were allowed to step within this same space of trust,” says Ghertner. “It’s hard to explain – as hard to explain as this book – but it’s a sense of connection to our inner selves and an understanding of beauty [as] something that comes from our beings, not from the skin.”
Wanting the book to be “as free-flowing as our creative process has been”, the pair worked closely with art director Jonny Lu on turning the images into something unique. “We really tried to keep away from [making] a traditionally experienced book,” Ghertner says of the final product, which arrives unbound so that pages can be shuffled around, folded up or stuck onto walls. Just like dreams themselves, the book is without a firm beginning or an end. “But it is enclosed and held,” says the photographer. “Almost grounded, as some of the subjects are similarly grounded to the earth.”
already past and already again there by Zoë Ghertner and Thomas de Kluyver is published in a limited edition of 500 copies, and is out now.
