What exactly is 'rude' – and when does it become good? In his photobook 'Rude in the Good Way', published by Loose Joints, Roe Ethridge turns the desire for images into the subject itself. Desire, consumption, sexuality, fashion and self-presentation flow together in a visual stream where high gloss and snapshots, Chanel and mouldy peaches suddenly make surprisingly good company.
For more than two decades, Ethridge has been one of those photographers who consistently refuses to choose between art and commerce. Fashion shoots, still lifes, private moments, screenshots and studio photographs – everything is allowed to coexist and charge the images around it. It is precisely this friction that has shaped his unmistakable visual universe.
In 'Rude in the Good Way', technicolor images of decaying fruit meet hyper-composed pictures of Lindsay Lohan; luxurious, almost lurid Chanel still lifes sit alongside intimate photographs of his partner and collaborator Lulu Sylbert. There are glimpses into painter John Currin’s erotically charged studio, sarcastic self-portraits and recurring references to the visual archive Ethridge has built over the past twenty years.
Things become particularly interesting when luxury and memory overlap. For Chanel No 5 from 1924 on Tray of Pearls and Mirror Checkerboard, Ethridge selected a historic perfume bottle from the Chanel archive that reminded him of his mother and his childhood. In Double Red Chanel, meanwhile, he doubles and layers an image originating from his Vogue Japan shoot with Lila Moss. Model and sunset appear doubled at once – familiar, artificial and slightly dislocated.
The private also takes centre stage. Three photographs of Lulu Sylbert rank among Ethridge’s most intimate works to date. Yet they function less as conventional nudes than as a collaborative exploration of how desire is produced in an image. Photographer and subject, partners and collaborators, work together to create libidinal imagery while attempting to avoid the traditional imbalance of power between the person behind and the person in front of the camera.
And then there is a half-melted chocolate biscuit that, through Ethridge’s lens, can become almost as sensual as a body.
That is part of the wit of 'Rude in the Good Way'. Ethridge treats the traditional hierarchy of images with deliberate indifference. A perfectly polished luxury still life can be just as compelling as an accidental glitch, a webcam screenshot or a pecked-at apple on a beach. His photographs are less concerned with asking what makes a good image than with questioning why we desire certain images in the first place.
In this sense, 'Rude in the Good Way' also becomes a remarkably precise reflection of our visual present: seeing, wanting and presenting ourselves have become almost impossible to separate. Ethridge offers no neat explanation. Instead, he puts the images on the table and lets them flirt, collide and seduce one another.
Collaboratively edited by Sarah Chaplin Espenon and Roe Ethridge, the book accompanies the artist’s eponymous solo exhibition at Gagosian Athens, presented from 22 January through 7 March 2026.
Born in Miami in 1969 and based in New York, Roe Ethridge is widely regarded as one of the defining figures in contemporary conceptual photography. His work has been shown at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Biennial and Tate, and he was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2011.
With more than fifteen books to his name – including American Polychronic, Neighbors, Sacrifice Your Body, Le Luxe and Rockaway, NY – Ethridge has developed a body of work in which fashion photography, fine art, everyday life and personal desire continuously contaminate one another.
Rude in the Good Way shows once again why Roe Ethridge is at his most compelling precisely where those worlds can no longer be neatly separated.
Roe Ethridge – Rude in the Good Way
Published by Loose Joints
Edited by Sarah Chaplin Espenon & Roe Ethridge, 2026
LOOSE JOINTS STUDIO SALE
And for those hungry for more: the current Loose Joints Studio Sale opens the doors to its warehouses in Marseille, London and Brooklyn for a limited time – offering open, handled or slightly damaged photobooks with reductions of up to 80%, including last-chance copies of sold-out titles.
