Marc Jacobs’ new men’s fragrance, Bang, has caused quite a stir lately with provocative print ads that feature Jacobs himself greased-up, nestled in crinkled metal and covered only by the Bang bottle. Jacobs came up with the name, which he chose for its immediacy, power and masculinity, while at the gym. The ad campaign was designed around the name by Juergen Teller, who has been photographing for Jacobs since 1998. Impact—visual, sexual, olfactory—seems to be the driving theme behind Bang, and the scent’s bottle fits in perfectly.
The crumpled effect Teller uses in the ad reminded me of Stephen J. Shanabrook and Veronika Georgieva’s “Paper Surgery” collection, which features magazine photos twisted and stapled to distort the subjects’ faces. The beautifully disturbing result is grotesquely impacted images— as though the subjects were pummeled by a prizefighter and the duo photographed the bloodless aftermath. Shanabrook, whose parents were an obstetrician and a coroner, often explores disfigurement in his work: he is most famous for a series of chocolates created from casts of injuries on cadavers.
Despite their superficial similarities, these works have polar opposite messages: Teller’s accentuates the human form, glorifies sex and promotes mainstream fashion, while Shanabrook and Georgieva’s finds aesthetic in a rearranging the human form by distorting an image of sex and mainstream fashion. Still, that doesn’t make the latter completely anti-establishment—Comme de Garçons commissioned a “Paper Surgery” image for their S/S 2010 SHIRT campaign.
As much as I love Teller’s and Jacobs’ other work, I have to say I find Shanabrook and Georgieva’s twisted surgery to have far more impact than Jacobs’ glittering exhibition.
Images via Stephen J Shanabrook and Beauty Snob
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