Guy Bourdin

stay Bourdin

edited by means of Charlotte Cotton and Shelly Verthime

Abrams, 2003/168 pp/$55 (hb)

shore Bourdin (1928-1981) is probably to advertising/fashion photography what Tony Ray-Jones is to British photography, what Gary Winogrand is to American road photography (especially in his Women Are Beautiful.) All three photographers have defined and asserted actual idiosyncratic visions that ally humor, irony, and in the case of Winogrand and Bourdin a certain attitude toward women that has been considered controversial and objectionable. In the world of fashion photography, which is what Bourdin's work is exclusively dedicated to, Helmut Newton is, without any doubt, the kindred spirit that emulates Bourdin. Bourdin appeared to entertain a morbid fascination for women that he squeeze outed in surrealistic images whose impact relied upon the efficiency of simple compositions and hardy color.

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Drama and death in the pursuit of the white rabbit was a public occurrence for the Alices in Bourdin's photographs. His Alices have grown into adult and sexual controls but still maintain an almost distorted at least fascinated relationship with childhood--from the viewer's/photographer's point of view--a surreal combination of Visconti's Death in Venice and Nabokov's Lolita. single of the main differences between Bourdin's photography and the works of the above-mentioned artists is that it is hardly known outside the magazines that published him of that kind as Vogue or Harper's Bazaar. Bourdin always refused to be recognized and honored outside his commercial field. He sometimes spoke of a potential volume or exhibition but always oppos selling his work to collectors or to be published in magazines other than the singles who commissioned him. As a spring unlike Helmut Newton, his work is little known. In 1985 he plane turned down the Grand Prix National de la Photographie awarded by means of the French Ministry of tillage From 1967 to 1981 he dedicated himself to the advertising campaigns of the shoe manufacturer Charles Jourdan for whom he made his greatest in quantity famous, provocative, and color-saturated images.

shore Bourdin, the book, is the catalog of the first serious retrospective exhibition of the photographer's work curated by means of Charlotte Cotton for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Insightful essays by means of Laurence Benaim, Rosetta Brooks, Charlotte Cotton, Philippe Garner, and Shelly Verthime accompany the images. The exhibition render free of accessed on April 17 and will shut its doors on August 17 2003 Several facts linked to the show, a concoct of contemporary French music sponsored by the agency of Les Inrock-uptibles, a panel discussion with Rosetta rivulets Charlotte Cotton and David Mellor, an evening with Jean-Paul Gaultier are also scheduled.

Information: http://www.vam.ac.uk.

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