In the series Supermodels, Wetzel + Schuster set out to trace the history of photographic representations of women. Their starting point is the very icons that shaped their own visual socialisation. Rather than re-enacting these historical portraits, they interrogate them: by stepping into the roles of the models they once admired, the artists shift the power dynamics and patterns of perception embedded within the photographs.

What happens to a famous image when gender and age are swapped? How do aesthetic ideals hold their own in a changed context? Supermodels addresses these questions as a reflection on authorship, gaze and gender, as well as on the fragile relationship between photographer and model, subject and projection.

The exclusive use of analogue SX-70 Polaroid film transforms a medium steeped in nostalgia into a conceptual tool. Its immediate, error-prone materiality serves both as a homage to the era of the ‘decisive moment’ and as a means of constructing a coherent visual fiction for the series. The work is, not least, a tribute to those often anonymous women who have helped shape the history of photography from within their images.