The infamous Hill of Crosses is a pilgrimage and tourist site near siauliai, Lithuania, which originated after the November Uprising of 1830-31, an extensive yet unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Russian rule. Crosses is Juergen Teller's intimate response to this place of remembrance, which he visited with his Lithuanian wife Dovile Drizyte and her parents in autumn 2022. With his ever curious, surveying eye, Teller captures the intense spirituality of this sacred destination. Responding to over 100,000 crucifixes within just one acre, his images embody this tangled web of religious iconography, including a dense multitude of crosses, stone sculptures of Jesus Christ draped in rosary beads, and large wooden carvings. Teller singles out details of small effigies of Christ and other emblematic features, deftly framing them against the landscape in an act of candid self-reflection. The series takes on an even deeper personal significance in the context of the 2022 passing of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, with whom Teller had collaborated since 2007, and his gallerist since 2013 Suzanne Tarasieve. He embeds portraits of these powerful yet vulnerable women into his collection of symbolic images, a compelling tribute to two personalities who continue to inspire his work.

Juergen Teller, born in Erlangen in 1964, studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich. His work has been published in influential magazines such as Vogue, System, i-D, POP and Arena Homme+, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions including those at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Teller won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2003, and from 2014 to 2019 held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg. His books with Steidl include Louis XV (2005), Marc Jacobs Advertising, 1998-2009 (2009), Siegerflieger (2015), Handbags (2019), Leben und Tod (2020), William Eggleston 414 (2020), Auguri (2022), The Master V (2023) and Notes About My Work (2023).