These Berlin creatives have put together a calendar celebrating seasonal skin conditions

As IG filters and Facetune seem to be airbrushing our skin into uniformity, skin that deviates from conventional beauty standards has become more interesting than ever. This is what inspired Berlin creatives Jonas Weber, Victoria Reuter, Laura Schaeffer, und Stefanie Wurnitschto turn their focus onto the body’s largest organ when making their 2020 Seasonal Sexy calendar. The team reimagined different conditions that are often linked with shame to focus on the distinctive ways in which they mark the body. SLEEK spoke to the creators of the calendar to find out more: 

What was the inspiration for taking on “alleged imperfections of skin” as the theme for this calendar?

Weber Calendars usually have generic topics, mostly nature, architecture or nudity, and look the same more or less. By starting the series “seasonal sexy” we wanted to focus on feelings and different topics. The first edition was just for fun, we created a series about dog butts. This year we wanted to do something more personal and sensitive.

Reuter My interest in this topic started after seeing a film portraying a man suffering from Neurofibromatosis Type 1 that causes fleshy lumps to form all over the body. Close-ups showed all the details and textures of this skin condition and I found this so interesting and in a way also so beautiful that this inspired me of diving deep into the world of skin diseases.

There are so many people in this world suffering from different skin conditions, feeling uncomfortable, feeling ashamed of themselves, not talking about it and living with their secret all their life, sometimes even not daring leaving the house into a world ruled by beauty and perfectionism.

Why did you choose to reimagine the conditions, rather than just document them?

Weber Most of us have minor or major skin imperfections; I myself have psoriasis. But since everyone is on the constant lookout for the latest trends, the unseen talents, skin imperfections might become kind of an uncanny it-piece – the next logical consequence is people starting to imitate them.

How did you go about pairing the photos with the months?

Schaeffer This was a tricky one, as there were about a million ways to go about it. For some months it was quite the obvious choice, for others we ended up deciding intuitively. It was important to us to create some kind of rhythm within the sequencing, whilst keeping thematic cohesiveness.

As a society, how do you think our perceptions of skin are changing, for the better or worse? 

Schaeffer I guess the ability to essentially create an alternate virtual self, gives us more control over how we are perceived by others, which results in highly curated versions of ourselves. It is uncanny how we strive to achieve perfection, where there is no such thing; this can only result in disappointment. Only as we adjust our unrealistic goals, we can get a more nuanced perspective and see the beauty within imperfection.

Reuter We are growing towards a more inclusive, diverse and body positive image, but there is still a lot of work to do to break away from the stereotypes and the ideal of perfection that has been created by the mainstream perception of beauty.

Do you have a favourite photo or condition, or one that has a personal connection behind it?

Schaeffer I tend to see the calendar more as a whole, so I don’t necessarily have one favourite image. As for the conditions, some do appear in pairs or periodically, so I guess most people may relate to more than just one of these, which is an aspect I find intriguing. As we change, our skin changes as well.

See more from the calendar below:

In conjunction with the calendar, the team created the Seasonal Sexy face filter, which you can access from a mobile device.

Fotografie von Laura Schaeffer.
Make-up by Victoria Reuter.
Art direction by Jonas Weber und Stefanie Wurnitsch.