For Juergen Teller, confrontation is an art and an act of care. “I don’t like taking a sly picture on the side. I like the direct approach. I want to be as honest [with] myself and the subject as possible,” the photographer says. “I’m depending on their humanness to come through.”

The Master V is the latest installment in Teller’s ongoing series of visual homages to who and what he deems masterful. Since 2005, he’s displayed his unorthodox and blunt approach in simple form. Its concept: the antithesis of the grandiose coffee-table book. Its images encompass full pages, unencumbered by lengthy analyses and detailed descriptions and cluttered spreads; the photographs speak for themselves.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Paris 2021.

The sereis’s fifth edition, released via Steidl, is comprised of manifold inspirations: Godfather of Punk Iggy Pop in standard shirtless form; a yellow-feathered bird, enveloped in the palm; football manager Carlo Ancelotti, smiling sheepishly off-camera; a spindly flower against a stark white backdrop, branching out from a simple vase; storyteller and provocateur Alejandro Jodorowsky, engulfed by plants in his Parisian home.

The Master V stays faithful to Teller’s strange and striking approach to portraiture and landscape alike. Though each displayed in his distinctive style, each of his subjects co-authors their own image, a true self-rendering in the most personal and peculiar versions of themselves.

Left: Garry Kasparov, Paris 2021. Right: Lina, London 2021.