Swinging between worlds of art and fashion for 26 years, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin transform their A-list subjects into Gothic beauties and charge floral still lifes with their Netherlands heritage. Part of an elite group of image-makers alongside Steven Meisel, David Sims and Mario Sorrenti, the husband-and-wife duo used digital manipulation to push fashion imagery to extremes, with campaigns for the likes of Lanvin, Givenchy and Miu Miu. This week marks the opening of Inez & Vinoodh, a retrospective exhibition at the Gagosian in LA, following their first show with the gallery in Paris earlier this year. From a cyborg Lady Gaga to a daisy-sprouting Bill Murray, and a room of 18 botanical portraits, the show features cult editorials from the likes of V, Interview and Vogue. “Our work has always been about this duality and dichotomy between the campy and the classical, the grotesque and the stylish; the elegant and the extreme,” explains van Lamsweerde, “inside each room, and together, which relates to the fact that we’re two people, two brains, doing everything together.” Here one half of the sought-after duo reveals the secrets of their unique vision. 

On their fascination with flower arranging…
Inez van Lamsweerde: Working with flowers, for me, is about coming as close as I can get to abstract painting; it’s very intuitive. We go to the New York City flower market in the morning and get everything we love, and with a very fast tempo we create these still lifes. It’s about bringing out the heroic side of each element, and that’s what we do with people. That’s always been our point—glorifying the specificity of human beings, whereas with the flowers it’s glorifying the specificity and the character of each flower. It’s all about this idea of finding the one element in someone’s physiognomy, heightening that through the lens and making everyone into a hero.

On abstracting beauty…
IVL: Four or five years ago we did a portrait of Natalie Portman­ that is very angelic. It’s her wearing a hoodie and her skin is incredibly flawless. There’s a giant hand resting on her forehead that belonged to Dick Page, who did the makeup. He put his hand on her head to fix something on her face; we took the picture and it now has a religious connotation. It’s a very still and sublime photograph of her. For this show, we used makeup to blacken her face all around her mouth and nose, as if she’s fallen with her face into the soot, or if her makeup ended up around her mouth instead of on her eyes. It creates this dichotomy; all of a sudden, this purity and beauty and angelic nature is destroyed by our own hand, with makeup. In this case it actually makes it dirtier and shows an underlying darkness, visualized on the outside. 

On LA artists…
IVL: I love Charles Ray for the uncanny and the hyperreal. Mel Ramos is another one of my all-time favorite artists. You could relate our portrait of Natalie Portman to a work by Mel Ramos [“Drawing Lesson #7”]. There’s an image of a beautiful blonde woman sitting in a chair and someone is painting her and drawing her, but in the image on the canvas her face looks completely destroyed. That’s dichotomy.  

On the power of digital…
IVL: I’m excited by the fact that social media like Instagram and Tumblr have enabled everyone to be a photographer, and made photography the number one communicator in the world. I’m thrilled about that.