Toiletpaper magazine was one of the main initial influences I had as a practicing graphic designer. Its graphic is so unique, elegant, and eye-catching, and is so different from other published magazines such as another well-recognized magazine, Wallpaper. It has a strong feature of being so surreal. Surely, photography is extremely vital for the publishing of this magazine. Hence, I would like to touch upon the rising photographers of this magazine.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari first paired as photographers in 2009, and later founded Toiletpaper. This magazine reveals a lot of surprising or weird images, combining with commercial image to create a sense of humor. Interestingly, they also have produced their trademark photographs for another magazine mentioned, Wallpaper, and also T Magazine and Dazed.
In addition to creating commercial image, this Toiletpaper also collaborated with a fashion brand, Kenzo, for AW14 campaign. They produced video and images to showcase their collection narrated with surreal aesthetic inspired by David Lynch, an American filmmaker. “This being our third collaboration, we were interested in figuring out ways to evolve the past concepts into something that felt different but still in the spirit of both Kenzo and Toiletpaper. The work included emotions collaborators experienced when seeing Lynch’s work. This speechless video emotionally affects audiences by its thrilling sound effects, uncomfortable movements of the performers, and the animated graphics that appear to be hypnotizing viewers. I enjoy how this short narrative video obscurely showcase the objects (products) in the scenes.