Legs up: Photographer Juergen Teller’s playful take on an age-old fertility myth

After having sex, some women hoping to get pregnant will immediately raise their legs up high, for a few minutes or longer, in the hope that gravity will assist conception.

Though the impact of such contortion is not actually grounded in science, it persists as a familiar trope in movies and TV, and has long been passed down generationally as fertility lore.

So when photographer Juergen Teller and his wife and creative partner Dovile Drizyte were trying for a baby while on vacation in Sicily two years ago, Teller recommended the practise.

“I said to Dovile, ‘It’s a better chance to get pregnant afterwards, if you put your legs up,’” he recalled in a joint video interview with CNN. With another couple, the suggestion might have just resulted in a quick Google search and a laugh over the old wives’ tale. But for Teller and Drizyte, who have had a fruitful artistic collaboration for the past few years — including, recently, their now 1-year-old daughter Iggy recreating her dad’s most famous fashion shoots — the exchange led to a tongue-in-cheek body of work.

Now a published book, “The Myth” is a portrait series featuring a nude Drizyte set against the 94 rooms of the neoclassical and art deco Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni in Lake Como, Italy. Against damask wallpaper, ornate gold bedframes and plush chaise longues, Drizyte’s legs rise in every photograph. She splays out on beds and floors, balances herself on small chairs, and overlooks the picturesque views of the mountainous region from atop a balcony table, all with her feet hovering in midair.

As they explored the villa, they were delighted to find symbols of fertility, femininity and motherhood in the hotel’s art collection. From Madonna and Child icons to baptismal scenes to sensual nude drawings, the works became a throughline in the “The Myth.”

“It was a very interesting surprise — it seemed like the hotel was helping us with the project,” Drizyte said.

What lies ahead

In each frame Drizyte is seemingly post-coital, though she noted that it was important for none of the poses to look sexualized.

“It was more (about) waiting for the baby,” she explained of the compositions. “What is coming? What is approaching? …Of course, there’s a bit of humor because you don’t know what’s going to happen; your life really changes.”

“Dovile had to be very serene,” Teller added, emphasizing how mentally — and for Drizyte, physically — exhausting the five-day shoot was as they entered each hotel room to decide on a new variation of the scene. By the time they had arranged the shoot with the hotel, Drizyte was already pregnant — and starting to show, adding “a bit of time pressure” to the project, she said.

Teller had previously stayed in the villa, even photographing a 2019 campaign for YSL there (also with a focus on legs, albeit in sheer hosiery), and the owners enthusiastically gave them free rein as staff prepared to close for the off-season, the photographer explained.

“We became a part of the hotel going into hibernation,” Drizyte recalled. “The maids were coming and cleaning these rooms and taking beds out.”

“Guests disappeared and it became more ghostlike,” Teller added. “It was wonderful, romantic and beautiful.” He added that the experience helped them concentrate and think about what laid ahead for them as parents.

Despite the fact that becoming pregnant was straightforward for Drizyte, she emphasized how much of it is luck. “It’s like a lottery, almost, whether it’s all quick and easy, or it takes longer, or there are complications,” she said. “You start really believing and asking or praying or contemplating… (or putting) your legs up — surely that helps?”

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