FACE TO FACE
Till Janz’s foray into the world of alternate realities and virtual viewings
The photographs in our fashion shoot read as ordinary snapshots of two housemates messing about at home. Except the home is a spectacular concrete monolith, dotted with icons of furniture design; the housemates wear A/W21 Gucci and Balenciaga to eat breakfast, Fendi to arm wrestle, and Bottega Veneta to take selfies; and one of the pair, his lips full and luscious, his brow and cheekbones razor-sharp, is clearly not human at all.
The feature is the work of photographer Till Janz, whose experiments in art and technological innovation led to the conception of Hugo, a magnificently antagonistic digital persona, who has entered into this fantasy world explicitly to make Janz’s life difficult. ‘I’ve always been really interested in the intersection of storytelling and technology,’ explains the Germany-born, London-based image-maker. A few years ago, Janz began to explore the possibilities of 3D avatar creation. ‘Hugo was the first character I created once I learned how to use the software,’ he says. ‘I kind of fell in love with him.’
Hugo became an alter ego of sorts for Janz. ‘It’s an interesting coexistence,’ says Janz. ‘I’m living in my head with him all the time now. I even reply to people on Instagram as Hugo. He’s my second half, but he’s the half I can’t live out in reality; he’s a bit more rude and arrogant.’ Through Hugo, Janz gently lampoons the fashion industry, interrogating its hypocrisies, tongue firmly pressed in cheek. ‘I’ve spoken to a few model agencies who are interested, so I’m in talks at the moment to get him onto the roster,’ he adds, earnestly.
Make no mistake: during shoots, the role of Hugo is performed by a body model, whose head is then replaced with that of Janz’s meta-human. But in the age of Instagram, in which digital portraiture is often filtered and edited beyond recognition, Janz’s creation of Hugo is akin to our own experience of our identities. ‘It’s not about perfectionism,’ the photographer explains. ‘It’s like creating an alter ego in the digital space. Which feels quite natural nowadays, because the way we present ourselves to the outside world through social media is a new reality. All of us have a second persona.’
Hugo is far from Janz’s only foray into digital imagery. With his ongoing, as-yet-unpublished body of work, Generations, he manipulates familiar faces, ageing them up and down and tweaking them to create new, alternate realities. It’s executed so flawlessly that the artifice would be almost imperceptible were the images not placed side by side. The triptych on these pages, created specifically for Wallpaper*, is his first set of self-portraits within the series.
He’s also working on an ambitious digital exhibition within Cryptovoxels, a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain. It’s all the fun of gallery representation without the obligations, contracts or commission, he tells me, smiling. Now all he needs is to make sure Hugo behaves at the private view. *