For most artists getting media coverage for an exhibition is
an uphill battle. A double page spread that includes images of their work calls
for celebratory drinks at a favored watering hole. Should this coverage be in an up market
glossy magazine champagne may well be on the menu.
During the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s a double page spread of the
work of the French, surrealist inclined, fashion photographer, Guy Bourdin, was
a regular monthly inclusion in the pages of Vogue Paris. As fashion guru Colin
McDowell wrote in The
Business of Fashion, “I
was working as a designer in Rome in the 1970s and I remember how everything in
the atelier stopped, each month, as we pounced on the newly delivered copy of
Vogue Paris. What were we looking for? What excitement did we expect? Nine
times out of 10 it was a fashion shoot by the photographer Guy Bourdin with
searingly bright colors, showing clothes as never shown before.”
Along with Helmut
Newton, Bourdin is credited with transforming fashion photography from the
attractive to that which attracts. A protégé of the American dada/surrealist
artist Man Ray, Bourdin made images that hinted at meanings rather than
articulating them and in which the fashion element was almost an afterthought.
The stylized violence and eroticism in a lot of his work has
seen him accused of the objectification of women and demanding to the point of
cruelty with his models. Although, his early 1980’s assistant, Sean Brandt, told the Guarding
Newspaper "I never saw him being cruel. Guy would push his models, but
only to get his vision recorded on celluloid. Probably a good analogy is good
sex, a lot of foreplay, mucking around, games, teasing, hard work and then,
usually very late at night, a miracle."
During his life time Bourdin was uninterested in holding
exhibitions of his work his monthly exposure in Vogue was obviously enough. It
is only after his death, with is son and heir Samuel Bourdin managing his
father’s estate, that his work has been exhibited, ensuring that Bourdin’s
legacy is not shrouded by obscurity.
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