Juergen Teller on Marc Jacobs & Heterosexual Confidence

He's shot everyone from Charlotte Rampling and Thurston Moore to Victoria Beckham. Yet Juergen Teller seems to prefer life behind the scenes. The German photographer rarely gives interviews, but in light of a soon-to-be released Steidl tome documenting the photog's last 20 years of ads for Marc Jacobs, Teller is speaking out. The Independent sat down with the iconic artist and fashion photographer to talk the past two decades of MJ advertising photos. Some of the best moments from the piece are after the jump.

On Kim Gordon as his first subject for Marc Jacobs: “We liked her. He was proud that she liked him. I think that you feel that energy in the picture. From then on we realized that, rather than photograph dead things, rather than photograph only product, we wanted to photograph Marc’s friends, my friends.”

On casting himself in the MJ ads with Charlotte Rampling: “I was very selfishly thinking: I’m going to be the man. I want to be with Charlotte Rampling.”

And, on why he was nearly naked during said shoot: “I couldn’t fit into any of the clothes. I was too fat.”

On collaborating with some of the biggest names in the fashion biz (MJ, Vivienne Westwood & Rei Kawakubo included): “They are all their own boss, if you like ... You don’t have an art director, a creative director, a CEO on the shoot. What Helmut says goes, what Rei says goes, what Vivienne says goes, what Marc says goes.”

On being a heterosexual fashion photographer: “Now I do have the confidence. It’s a weird thing to do, I know, but I just kind of got into it and I think I do it very well.”