The Dutch-born, Paris-based photographer first met the IDEA team three years ago at a book signing. Six months later, co-founder and photographer, Angela Hill invited him for a drink at her Paris hotel. \u201cI think it was The Bristol,\u201d he says, \u201cshe mentioned we should do a book\u201d. The result was Vandals (2024), a 400-page doorstopper of unwitting youth portraits. Two years on, Wolves expands on this logic, turning the lens to the singular within the collective: still, watchful, almost eerily cool. Though documentary in subject, the book\u2019s polish and Vandenbrink\u2019s fashion past give these images a hyper-stylised editorial vision of the teenage collectiveness. It is perhaps unsurprising that Vandenbrink works so closely with IDEA, Hill\u2019s preoccupation with girlhood mirroring his own with adolescence. \u201cShe sometimes jokes that I am her twin brother,\u201d he adds, \u201cbecause of the work, and that we are both only children.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s genesis lay with Vandenbrink\u2019s boyfriend, his \u201ccreative consciousness\u201d as he describes him, who first came across a text by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari, 1914: One or Several Wolves, which muses on the position of the subject in relation to the whole, or rather the pack or wolf-multiplicity. Applying this understanding to the aesthetics and sociability of adolescence, Vandenbrink\u2019s images look at the urban teenage pack, gathered in public space. Both the original Deleuze and Guattari text and a newly commissioned response, Field Notes by Eliot Haworth, are printed alongside the images. The latter is a gorgeous description-cum-analysis which, Vandenbrink notes, \u201cfirst reads very literally about wolves\u201d before, on second and third reading, reveals itself to \u201calso be about teenagers.\u201d Haworth\u2019s abstracted descriptions of the shared behaviours of teenagers and wolves perfectly articulate the complexities of the philosophical inquiry \u201cat once the collective, and wholly themselves.\u201d Image and text alike occupy the teen-wolf hyphen.<\/p>\n
The book itself is non-narrative and intuitively organised. Working with designer Linda van Deursen, Vandenbrink tells me, \u201cShe read the text and questioned what wolves would do [\u2026] made a bit of a skeleton,\u201d selecting images for certain characteristics: \u201cresting, playfulness, howling, all these things.\u201d The enactments aren\u2019t literal, but an underlying animalism surfaces: bodies resting together on the street, physical contact, eyes peering out the corner as if scanning for prey, one boy even bears a scar above his eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m shooting in public, it\u2019s kind of like hunting and meditating at the same time,\u201d Vandenbrink reveals. The images were shot across various European cities, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, and Venice, some only months before printing. His previous work was made at a distance, anonymous and voyeuristic; for this project he\u2019s submerged himself in the action. \u201cI used to use a long lens, so nobody could see me or talk to me, but I wanted to change that because it was not very honest,\u201d he says. \u201cNow that I\u2019m standing in the middle, a lot of them come up to me and ask me what I\u2019m doing or ask me to take another picture on their own iPhone, which is quite funny.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There is an image, taken in Venice earlier this year, of a young boy resting against a stone ledge. His eyes are closed, lips slightly parted; the sharp line of his haircut and jaw lend the face an almost statuesque clarity, while the flush of his cheek and a small mole returns him to the realm of the living. A restful Antinous in a white top and zip-up, framed by the blurred crowns of surrounding heads.<\/p>\n It is, Vandenbrink admits, \u201ca manipulated view of the world [\u2026], what I\u2019m aiming for and who I\u2019m aiming at.\u201d He mentions he gets plenty of requests to do casting. \u201cThere is a certain type, I guess, that I\u2019m looking for,\u201d he says. \u201cAlthough, I try to be very open.\u201d He singles out Milan, where \u201cthe guys wear the same brands \u2013 Puma, Adidas, Balenciaga \u2013 but they look different. They look more stylish,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s strange, but it\u2019s almost like their tracksuits are more tailored\u201d. While the images are not constructed or styled, it is through their assembly that they become editorialised. Winter\u2019s wolves are dressed in caps and fur hats, black cotton hoodies, puffer jackets and dirty trainers. Even the props (a smattering of plastic bottles, coffee cups, phones, and backpacks) are elevated images of contemporary teenage life. \u201cMaybe in 30 years\u2019 time you\u2019ll see these images and think, \u201cthis wasn\u2019t the 70s, but the 2020s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"Winter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/474709.jpg\")
WolvesPhotography by Winter Vandenbrink. Courtesy of IDEA<\/p>\n
![\"Winter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/474705.jpg\")
WolvesPhotography by Winter Vandenbrink. Courtesy of IDEA<\/p>\n