The photographers Dimitri Scheblanov and Jesper Carlsen forged a professional partnership under the moniker of Herring & Herring, a tribute to their shared love of the pickled fish. Under it, they produce provocative and modern images for commercial and editorial clients spanning from Gucci and DeBeers to Vice magazine. Last year the pair created their first issue of Herring & Herring magazine, a text-free monograph devoted to fashion photography, which they published under the title “Fit to Print” and sent out to industry colleagues and friends.
Next month, the duo will release their second issue and first available to the public, “Framed.” Featuring seven different covers, it’s a 100-page compendium of unexpected, humorous, sometimes absurd images of celebrity subjects: Elijah Wood living out a surrealist day in suburban Hollywood, Beyoncé cheekily showing off her curves, Fred Armisen posing as various archetypal characters, including a black-lipsticked goth rocker. The shoots were challenging for some; Kelly Osbourne, for instance, appeared with several other female models, all naked. “The experience went from terrifying to inspirational and gave me a whole new perspective and appreciation for self-confidence,” she wrote later on her blog.
“The idea was, how do we photograph celebrities who have been photographed countless times before that the public has a certain impression of — how do we frame them in our own way?” explains Scheblanov, citing the Hollywood-tinged photos he and Carlsen shot of Elijah Wood as an example. The duo aimed to set up a dichotomy between Wood performing basic, quotidian activities and illustrations of aliens and UFOs that the duo later laid over the images. “That put him in this whole other world,” Scheblanov says.
Herring & Herring magazine ($20) will be on sale at select newsstands the second week of September.