CT: Do you use only small format cameras for your fashion work and is this a conscious decision?

Juergen Teller: "I always use 35mm cameras. They are very magical for me, I think it is very close to life. With a medium-format camera, the image is flat and looks like a photograph because it becomes studied and structured. Using a 35mm camera, it feels like I have caught something out of life. It provides a way of breaking down certain barriers because I'm shy, and it helps ease down the person I'm photographing. It gives a certain rhythm and the other person has a sensation that this is not that precious or important. The interesting point is where things start and end. What is reportage photography, portrait photography or fashion photography? How can you separate photography's capacity both to trace something real - the event in front of the camera - but also to express the photographer's pre-conceived ideas and sensibility? Photography carries both real and fictional elements and I enjoy the slippage between the traditional genres of photography that this combination allows. With everything in life, we want to put things in categories. I think there aren't many photographers who are able to blur the lines. You do have a slightly different way of working with different subjects but , in a way, it is all the same. Sometimes the reason you take photographs is to find out something for yourself. You are really curious to see how something looks in a picture. I want to show what I am curious about, go into areas that I am unsure of and that are uneasy for me. The camera opens doors to places you would never get without it. As long as I have emotion, I am sure I will explore things."

Imperfect Beauty: The making of contemporary fashion photographs. Charlotte Cotton. 2000. London: V&A Publications
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