On the twentieth anniversary of its publication, this volume reprints
and expands upon what has become a beloved photobook classic. Inspired
by the striking dress codes of various social groups, Rotterdam-based
photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have been
systematically documenting the group identities they have encountered on
the streets of cities around the world since 1994. They call their
series Exactitudes, as a contraction of "exact" and "attitude." By
presenting their subjects in an identical framework--each member of a
group is posed similarly against a white ground--Versluis and
Uyttenbroek create an almost scientific record of people's attempts to
distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity,
manifested in a strict dress code. Simultaneously rigorously documentary
and artistic, the project tests the apparent contradiction between
individuality and uniformity, subverts the idea of "street style" and
disrupts conventions of documentary street photography (the series has
been called "August Sander and Eugène Atget turned on their heads by
Bernd and Hilla Becher" by photographer and critic Gil Blank). For this
twentieth-anniversary edition, Versluis and Uyttenbroek have produced 19
new series. The subcultures of Rotterdam's heterogeneous street scene
remain a major source of inspiration for them, although they have also
visited St. Petersburg, Zurich, Milan, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro,
Casablanca, Praia (Cabo Verde), New York, Bordeaux, London and Paris.
