Can Love Be a Photograph? 40 years of Inez & Vinoodh at Kunstmuseum Den Haag

An expansive retrospective explores four decades of image-making where love, identity, and illusion dissolve into one another.

Inez & Vinoodh, Me Kissing Vinoodh (Eternally), 2010

A kiss that stretches beyond a single moment, a body that feels both intimate and strange. At Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Inez & Vinoodh present Can Love Be a Photograph, a major retrospective celebrating 40 years of their work. On view from March 21 to September 6, 2026, the exhibition brings together four decades of image-making across art, fashion and portraiture. Structured across 18 rooms, it focuses on their shared practice since 1986, exploring how their images construct emotional, psychological and symbolic narratives around love, identity and perception.

Rather than following a chronological order, the exhibition is organised thematically, allowing images from different periods to enter into dialogue. This approach reframes photography as something beyond documentation, opening it up as a space where time, memory and imagination intersect.

Inez & Vinoodh, A$AP Rocky, RZA & Rihanna – Vogue UK, 2023

At the centre, ‘The Psychomorphic Phenomenon’ gathers early digital works from the 1990s. Series like ‘Thank You Thigh Master’, ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘The Forest’ present bodies shaped by beauty, childhood ideals and structures of power. Emotion appears embedded in the image, altering the surface itself.

Recurring throughout, ‘The Kiss’ becomes a key motif. Since 1999, it marks the moment where two bodies merge into one, dissolving boundaries between self and other. This gesture continues in ‘Think Love’, their most recent work, where intimacy extends towards a generational horizon.

Inez & Vinoodh, Fashion Plate no. 3, 2020

Alongside their artistic practice, their fashion imagery unfolds as a parallel language. Campaigns and editorials operate as psychological constructions, while large-scale portraits of cultural figures build a contemporary iconography charged with projection and presence.

Accompanied by a publication featuring voices such as Francesco Bonami and a conversation with Tilda Swinton, the exhibition positions photography as a space where love, perception and imagination remain inseparable.