Thomas Demand Beyer #15, 2011

The work is from the series Model Studies and were begun in response to a residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles during which Thomas Demand discovered the archive of the celebrated architect John Lautner (1911 – 1994). Lautner’s glamorous and curvaceous homes have been featured in many films, including the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. This is the first time that Demand has photographed models that are not his own. Depicting them from many angles, he establishes an intimate relationship with them, independent of the buildings to which they refer. “I tried to avoid making images of architecture,” Demand writes. “It’s the sculptural presence, and the traces of someone’s practice, of understanding and remodelling, which raised my attention.”