Juergen Teller, Dovile Drizyte: Auguri

Description

"We are building our future together" declared Juergen Teller and Dovile Drizyte on their wedding invitation, the words handwritten on a photo of the couple proudly wearing nothing less than safety hats and jackets, as they strike a pose on a construction site. This set the celebratory, irreverent tone for their wedding in Naples, an occasion they ensured was an unforgettable, multi-day experience for their guests, in a city they love for its gritty beauty and the warmth of its people. Auguri is Teller and Drizyte's uninhibited visual diary of their wedding adventure, from initial location scouting to the welcome party with rooftop dancing overlooking the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. From the ceremony to the formal dinner-where each lucky guest received an unexpected gift from the bride and groom, a ceramic plate signed and printed with a different motif from the "We are building our future together" series-and the night's undeniable highlight: a delightfully dirty performance by subversive drag queen Christeene and her band. From the lazy Sunday afterwards, on a local beach with gelati, calamari and ping pong, to the honeymoon in Sicily. Auguri is at once Teller and Drizyte's personal thank you to their guests, and their tongue-in-cheek tribute to amore in all its vital, unadorned and fabulous forms.

Juergen Teller, born in Erlangen in 1964, studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt fur Photographie in Munich. His work has been published in influential magazines such as Vogue, System, i-D, POP and Arena Homme+, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions including those at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Teller won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2003, and from 2014 to 2019 held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Nurnberg. His books with Steidl include Louis XV (2005), Marc Jacobs Advertising, 1998-2009 (2009), Siegerflieger (2015), The Master IV (2019), Handbags (2019), Leben und Tod (2020) and William Eggleston 414 (2020). Dovile Drizyte, born in Kaunas in 1982, is Juergen Teller's creative partner. Drizyte studied political science and diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, before relocating to New York where she worked with luxury and fashion brands for 15 years. Since 2018 she has been based in London, collaborating closely with Teller on all his editorial, art and publishing projects.