‘It is a celebration of our love, of our life together. Of all the amazing people we met and the fact that we can express all our ideas through photography, through digital manipulation has been endlessly inspiring.’ – Inez & Vinoodh
Featured image above: courtesy of Kunstmuseum
The brand new exhibition at Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Can Love Be a Photograph, is a major retrospective celebrating the forty-year career of the legendary, Dutch-born photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. If you’ve picked up a glossy fashion magazine, chances are you’ve seen their work.
This monumental exhibition—consisting of 18 rooms—looks back on the life and creative partnership that these artists have shared since 1986. As pioneers in the field of digital imaging, Inez & Vinoodh occupy a unique position at the intersection of fashion and art, from which they continually push the boundaries of the medium of photography.
Images below: Sherika Rooplal-Clappers
In addition to their artistic work, Inez & Vinoodh have created influential campaigns for leading fashion houses such as Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel for decades, and have had global stars like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Barack Obama, Brad Pitt, and Billie Eilish in front of their cameras.
To this day, the couple are driven by the conviction that a photograph is not a fixed entity, but a malleable surface. The duo pioneered digital image manipulation in the 1990s. For them, this remains the ideal tool to continue developing an image even after the photograph has been taken.
To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of their joint artistic practice, Kunstmuseum Den Haag has invited Inez & Vinoodh to look back on their shared creative lives. The galleries are arranged thematically, with the tension between reality and construction as the common thread. In their works, they create a seductive and alienating world. They challenge you to rethink beauty and authenticity, and to question how identity is formed and experienced.
Above all, Inez & Vinoodh view photography as the ultimate act of love. In their images, it is not so much the subject, but the driving force. Love flows between the artists and their models, bringing the photographs to life from within. After four decades of collaborating, experimenting, and shared authorship, Inez & Vinoodh reveal a simple, clear truth: love can actually be a photograph.
What struck me most after seeing the exhibition, standing in those rooms, was how familiar so many of these images felt — faces and compositions I had absorbed through the pages of fashion magazines for years, now suddenly alive at a scale that stops you in your tracks. Seeing them in person transforms them entirely; what reads as sleek editorial on a printed page reveals itself, in real life, as something far more raw and emotionally charged. These are not just photographs — they are proof that beauty, when made with love, has a way of staying with you long after you have left the room.
Book
The eponymous photobook has been published accompanying the exhibition. In addition to dozens of photographs by Inez & Vinoodh, this book contains contributions by Michael Amzalag & Mathias Augustyniak, Guus Beumer, Francesco Bonami, Pamela Chen, Donatien Grau, Margriet Schavemaker, and Willemijn van der Zwaan, as well as a conversation with Tilda Swinton.
This beautiful edition, designed by MM (Paris) and published by Hannibal Books, is available in the museum shop.
Can Love Be a Photograph – 40 Years of Inez & Vinoodh is on view from 21st March to 6th September 2026.
Images: Sherika Rooplal-Clappers and Kunstmuseum Inez & Vinoodh
Sherika Rooplal-Clappers is a contributing writer for The Hague Online, covering culture, lifestyle, and local events. With a passion for storytelling and international perspectives, she highlights the people, places, and experiences that make The Hague a dynamic city.