Pol Kurucz // Glam Jail

Felipe Rodríguez-Mattern
Apr 8
2 min read

'Aesthetic Irreverence as Visual Manifesto'

In the realm of contemporary photography—where the canon of beauty has been refined to the point of sterility—Pol Kurucz emerges as a lucid provocateur, an architect of the absurd who masterfully subverts the codes of fashion and visual identity. His work, exuberant and unrestrained, unfolds as an act of calculated transgression: a spectacle of excess in which color, theatricality, and corrosive humor converge in a symphony that challenges aesthetic conventions. His lens neither flatters nor exalts; it deconstructs, satirizes, and reconstructs, forging a universe that defies restraint and predictability. Exhibit A: GLAM JAIL.

Photo series by Pol Kurucz ©

Texts & Content Curation by

Photography and Art Direction: Pol Kurucz ©

Styling: Carolyna Mello

Set Design: Nina Simao

Lighting: Guilherme Griebler

Assistants: Lara Ferro, Mary Cruz, Claus Pinheiros, Monica Rodrigues

Kurucz has carved out his own language within fashion photography through the concept of "trash glam", a term that encapsulates his vision: extravagance as a statement of intent, and subversion as a response to the homogenization of visual culture. Far from the traditional idealization of beauty, his imagery draws from the exaggerated, the artificial, and the grotesque—imbuing his characters with a theatricality that oscillates between parody and empowerment. Each of his images is a cryptic narrative, an enigma wrapped in neon and visual excess, where luxury and marginality coexist in a game of deliberately dissonant contrasts.

Glam Jail is a series of images that transforms the sterile visitation booths of prisons into exuberant expressions of color and fashion. With a distinctly eccentric flair, the project reimagines confinement through a lens of flamboyant aesthetics and unapologetic style.

His aesthetic is not merely a visual artifice, but a manifesto. Kurucz’s compositions, saturated to the brink of excess, operate as a veiled critique of image fetishism and the relentless worship of the pristine and the normative. In his universe, fashion ceases to be a mere exercise in vanity and becomes an act of dissent—a tool of inquiry that dismantles, with biting irony, the very frivolity that seeks to exalt it. His work, featured in publications such as Vogue, ELLE, Glamour, and Paper Magazine, has positioned him as an artist who not only captures the spirit of his time but distorts it, revealing its most unsettling contradictions.

Kurucz does not merely document reality; he reinvents it, deconstructs it, and stages it in a realm that defies any attempt at categorization. His work is a spectacle of meticulously orchestrated excess—a visual opera in which every character embodies an extreme vision of identity, power, and femininity. Through his lens, kitsch becomes art, the grotesque transforms into sophistication, and the banal is recast as a fierce critique of contemporary image culture.

In a world obsessed with the cleanliness of representation, Pol Kurucz reminds us that beauty lies not only in harmony, but also in chaos, dissonance, and irreverence. His work—both unsettling and mesmerizing—is a testament to the fact that the most authentic art is not that which conforms, but that which disturbs, challenges, and above all, compels us to look again.

GLAM JAIL: Entirely produced in Brazil—with local models, celebrities, designers, and production crew—P.K. and his K.C. bring this dreamlike series to life.