Study - Volume 15 - Up and Over with Alex Matz

The imagery surrounding show jumping has long remained trapped in a narrow visual tradition : old-world aristocracy, polished stables, English countryside nostalgia. But the reality of the sport is far more physical and contemporary. It is an environment governed primarily by adrenaline, exhaustion, risk and love for the animals.

Alex Matz, one of the most promising young show jumpers of his generation, carries the expectations attached to a formidable lineage. His father, Michael Matz, was an Olympic equestrian and celebrated trainer. His mother, D.D. Matz, was a Pan American champion. Horses, competition, and discipline are the atmosphere in which he was raised.

During the spring season in Wellington, Florida, photographer Jeremy Everett spent a week following Matz : mornings at the training facility, long afternoons preparing horses, weekends moving between arenas and performances. The portfolio is the portrait of an isolated and deeply immersive subculture, one now beginning to move beyond its closed circles and toward broader visibility. Alex Matz appears here as the embodiment of a generational shift. With his matinee-idol looks, and obvious devotion to the sport, he feels far removed from the outdated mythology that has long framed equestrianism. He belongs to a new era, one where show jumping can finally be seen not as a relic of tradition, but as something athletic, psychological, cinematic, and unmistakably modern.

The fashion insert of this 15th volume was photographed by Marie Deteneuille, working alongside fashion editor Rae Boxer. They turned their attention toward youth and the unstable logic through which young people construct identity through dress. Featuring model George Anderson, the portfolio explores a wardrobe assembled through instinctive re-appropriation : sporty teenage staples colliding with corporate garments inherited, or borrowed, and unconsciously absorbed from previous generations. Clothes gathered over time, transformed through repetition, boredom, experimentation, and necessity. The images reflect a generation for whom personal style is no longer built through total looks or rigid subcultural codes, but through fragments continuously recombined impulsively.

This volume also contains a special insert dedicated to Loewe’s second collection designed by Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, photographed by German artist Rosemarie Trockel. The famed artist occupies a singular position within postwar German art, emerging in Cologne during the 1970s, she developed a practice that moves fluidly between drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and installation while maintaining a sharp conceptual rigor. Photographed over two days with complete freedom to manipulate, rearrange, and recompose the looks, the resulting images move far beyond the conventions of a fashion story. The portfolio functions instead as an extension of Trockel’s broader artistic practice : severe, strange, psychologically charged, and resistant to stable interpretation.

Contributors : Rae Boxer, Marie Deteneuille, Jeremy Everett, Alex Matz, Rosemarie Trockel, Nicole White
Design : Rupert Smyth Studio
Content : 152 pages of color and black and white photographs, protective packaging
Dimensions 21cm x 29.7cm

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