Altamont x Andres Serrano
2013
Art Direction, Project Management & Design: Alan Garcia
Video: Steven Brahms
This was a dream come true for me. I’ve been a fan of Andres Serrano since the first time I saw an exhibition of his when I was a teenager in Texas. I loved the beauty he could bring to taboo subject matter. His reputation is legendary and it was an incredible honor to meet and work with him. I reached out via any related email I could find online - it was a complete cold call. His wife, Irina, responded and played an important part in organizing this. We agreed on the photographs that would be used, with the condition that all four tees would be black. The real highlight for me was getting to visit his medieval style home in New York to interview him - so surreal.
“The collaborative project between Altamont and Andres Serrano merges two entities not so obviously paired, by bringing to the public clothing with a statement. They have chosen four images from the archives of Serrano’s work that they felt would create a motion in, not only the design world, but with artists alike. To many Serrano is the man responsible for Piss Christ and a national scandal over government funding of controversial art. For those who look beyond headlines, he’s a highly accomplished and ever-evolving photographic artist showing us the ordinary in extraordinary ways. With his post-Piss Christ Series, Nomads, he made a studio portraits of New York's ethnic homeless and Juxtaposed them with members of the Ku Klux Klan. In the Morgue series, he dissected violent death and found the human thread on the coroners slab, while a history of sex explored the human mating urge in its infinite variety.”