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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 AMERICANPHO
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MERT ALAS & MARCUS PIGGOTT
STORY BY MATTHEW ISMAEL RUIZ
© M e r t A l a s & M a r c u s P i g g o t t
38 AMERICANPHOTOMAG.COM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013
ashion’s reigni
ng
auteurs Mert & Marcus
Exuberantly defiant in its variety,
the work of Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott
is consistent in its brashness. And it’s made
the duo among the most sought-after and
talked-about photographers in the business.
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M a r c u s P i g g o t t
Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs
201
Lara
Vo
ert Alas and Marcus Piggott—affection-
ately known in fashion circles as simply
Mert & Marcus—live a charmed life. As
art-conscious club kids in the ’90s, they fell back-
ward into fashion, each other’s arms, and, most
important, photography.
They choose not to discuss their romantic status,
but their creative collaboration is so powerful that it
has long transcended physical attraction. Alas told
us that for him, making Mert & Marcus pictures is
about the time they share and the work that goes
into them—neither has any desire to work separate-
ly—and continually pulling from an eclectic range of
influences in the service of their point of view.The duo’s discerning, constantly evolving aes-
thetic makes them coveted among haute-couture
magazines and advertisers who give them the free-
dom to make images without the constraints placed
on many of their fellow photographers.
In the economics of photography, the divide
between commercial and editorial work is pro-
nounced; for fashion, even more so. Fashion
photographers use editorial work, often unpaid, to
express themselves artistically and to attract the
attention of deep-pocketed luxury brands. Alas and
Piggott developed their aesthetic shooting and styl-
ing for forward-thinking magazines such as Dazed
& Confused and i-D and moved on to regularly shoot
editorial work for the likes of Vogue and W and ads
for brands such as Louis Vuitton and Givenchy.
Stylists love the pair because their infinitely
expanding collection of influences means they might
be working with any imagery, from raw nature to
space alien to zombie baroque. Designers love them
because they entice people into a world where a
handbag costs more than some cars. “Our job is to
create an identity for brands so people can relate
to them,” Alas says. “But that doesn’t mean that it
doesn’t hold any artistic value within that process.”
Such a perspective is not necessarily unique, but
what sets them apart is their range. Many pho-
tographers become known for an easily identifi-
able style that editors and art directors can bank
on. But these two seem to be from the Bruce Lee
school of photography. The martial artist whose
style became famous for having no identifiable
style was unbeatable because opponents could
never predict his next move. By not restricting
themselves to one style—often even they don’t
know what’s coming next—Alas and Piggott have
made themselves appealingly versatile.“It probably would be easy to have one style, to
be honest,” Piggott says. “But we would get bored.”
M
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Alas concurs: “The substance directs the light, the
look, the colors, not our style,” he says. “It would be
so vain to start a project with our style. That’s not
how we approach it.”
When Alas and Piggott met in 1993 at a party
on a pier in Hastings, England, they were barely
in their twenties, both club kids looking for the
next party. Alas, a Turkish emigré who had studied
classical music, tells us that before they met, they
hadn’t lived much life yet, and that, in effect, grow-
ing up together formed the basis of their fluid work-
ing relationship. “We kind of experienced everything
together anyway, from the start, so i t’s so easy to
communicate. It’s like looking back at your diary
to say, ‘Oh, do you remember this?’ It evolves veryquickly between ourselves.”
Their meeting began a whirlwind romance that
ultimately led to their picking up a camera and
learning how to make pictures together. They ran
with an artsy east London crowd, going to galleries
with Lee McQueen (founder of the Alexander
The People’s Ph
Below: Jessica Stam, for
W , March 2005. Right:
Christina Ricci, for POP
Autumn/Winter 2004.
PIGGOTT: IT PROBABLYWOULD BE EASY TO HAVEONE STYLE, TO BE HONEST.BUT WE WOULD GET BORED.
ALAS: IT WOULD BE SO VAIN TO START A PROJECTWITH OUR STYLE.
‘ ‘
Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs
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McQueen design house) and stylist and fashion
editor Katy England, and chasing artists like group-
ies. Piggott taught Alas, who was assisting McQueen
at shows during the early ’90s, how to use a camera,
and they developed their workflow and aesthetic in
a loft on Old Street. The two would go to bookshops
on Charing Cross Road, look at the their favorite
monographs, and try to figure out the lighting. For
their earliest shoots, they did everything themselves—
styling, hair, makeup, and set design. Their first
published work in Dazed & Confused was sparked,
unsurprisingly, over drinks with friends who just
happened to work there.
Early work for cult titles like Dazed allowed them
to work in fashion while retaining the freedom topush their limits artistically. “The Love magazine, the
i-D magazine, and in the old days, The Face maga-
zine—all these magazines didn’t have so much of a
commercial purpose, but they did have prices of the
clothes,” Alas says. “So, yes, we want to do art, we
want to show the world that we’re not just about a
bag and shoe. Yes, we are rebels and we don’t care
about money. But it’s an industry. It’s commercial,
plus culture, plus art. In one bag.”
The pair’s pragmatic attitude has helped them
navigate the world of commercial fashion, but their
taste is responsible for their status as trendsetters.
They borrow only from the best. Images by Mert &
Marcus draw on the work of such notables as Guy
Bourdin, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Helmut Newton,
and the duo continually pull from new influences.
But with that approach, their visibility opens them
to controversy. A 2011 Love magazine editorial Alas
and Piggott produced called “What Lies Beneath”
drew criticism online for bearing an undeniable
likeness to photographer Jeff Bark’s haunting series
Woodpecker. Their 46-page spread, with its striking
similarities in subject, tone, and iconography—and
even some props—can be said to expand upon the
vision of Berk’s original eight images, with a bigger
budget and higher production values.
Indeed, not much shackles their creativity: Their
shoots boast some of the biggest budgets, most
talented collaborators, and hippest influences. They
create images with cameras and computers with
help from a small army of digital technicians, re-
touchers, and art assistants before, during, and after
their shoots, obsessing about every detail and find-
ing solutions to every problem that arises. Having
a team allows them the luxury to concentrate on
the more artistic decisions to be made on set rather
than be bogged down by technical troubleshooting.Those artistic decisions are typically collabora-
tions with like-minded creative rock stars like Love
founder and editor Katie Grand or Vogue creative
director Grace Coddington. Their circle of co-
conspirators is small but close. They talk on set in
a sort of culture-vulture shorthand, using loose as-
sociations to describe the desired vibe for the shoot.
When they say to Coddington, “Factory girl, ’60s
England, she’s poor, she’s lonely, she’s depressed,”
Left: Adele, for U.S. Vogue,
March 2012. Above: Daria
Werbowy, for French
Vogue, September 2012.
Fashion’s Reign
everyone knows what they’re going
So when Vogue’s imposing fashi
Tonne Goodman, invited them to d
infamous shoot with Adele—which
our 2012 Images of the Year (Janua
2013)—they trusted that their visio
it to the page. Though they were e
Adele’s music, Alas and Piggott hapainting the media’s well-worn pic
sick young starlet with a sharp coc
velvet vocal chords. They wanted t
their world, make her one of their
wanted to embrace her beauty, her
says. “Bring her into this world of
Again, controversy followed. The
ages drew jeers from critics who ca
authenticity, up in arms at the exte © M e r t A l a s & M a r c u s P i g g o t t ( 2 )
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© B r a n d o n S t a n t o n ( 4 )
Left: Angela Lindvall,
for POP Fall/Winter
2002/2003. Above:
Malgosia Bela, for
LOVE Issue #8.
Fashion’s Reigni
ALAS: WE WANT TO
ART, WE WANT TO STHE WORLD THAT WNOT JUST ABOUTA BAG AND SHOE.
‘ © M e r t A l a s & M a r c u s P i g g o t t ( 2 )
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The People’s Ph
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Above: Jeisa Chiminazzo,
for POP Autumn/Winter
2005. Right: Kate Moss,
for Love Issue #3.
Lisa, and you remember that experience.”
That such art informs their work doesn’t mean
they’re trying to make a new Mona Lisa. They
don’t hide their influences; they made a cactus
shrine to Helmut Newton at their palacio in Ibiza
after the photographic great died. Lots of photog-
raphers borrow from Newton, and from Richard
Avedon and Bill Brandt. But what holds these
two together as a team and sets them apart from
others is their point of view and their restless
hunger to try something else—and then something
else again. Alas says that he doesn’t even like 80
percent of their past work. It’s that drive and dis-
satisfaction that pushes them forward.
“I think that’s the hardest thing, when you have
a certain level of taste,” Piggott says. “Trying to
please yourself.” AP
Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs
processing applied to the images. Alas could not
care less. “When I see a celebrity the way the celeb-
rity [always] is, I have no interest,” he says.
Alas and Piggott do not confine their artistic ex-
pression to glossy magazine pages. For years they’ve
been working on an archive of personal work,
including plenty of nudes, destined eventually for a
book (they’ve been offered deals by a few major pub-
lishers but have yet to sign). Whatever a Mert &
Marcus book ends up looking like, the duo will likely
have moved on to something new. And to be sure, it
will unpeel more layers of artistic inspiration.
For Piggott, those eclectic touchstones include
“dreams and holidays and life,” while Alas explains
how his travels influence the work. “You go to a
museum, you remember Mona Lisa looking at
you,” he says. “You see a girl that looks like Mona