"Timeless images from one of the first fashion provocateurs whose singular way of seeing influenced contemporary photography and continues to do so.” –Emotion Daily
Hbk, 6.75 x 9.75 in. / 128 pgs / 98 color. | 6/30/2010 | Out of stock $49.95
Intriguing, revolutionary and undoubtedly one of the most influential fashion photographers of the twentieth century, Guy Bourdin was a groundbreaking image-maker, whose work has achieved a cultlike following. His striking use of color, suggestive narratives and surrealist aesthetics established a visual language entirely his own. Though best known for his color images, Bourdin launched his career in black and white in the early 1950s. Untouched explores this largely unseen work and gives insight into the early development of his photographic eye. The carefully constructed images, initially conceived as an exhibition series, reveal his artistic motivation years before he began working on assignments for French Vogue and Photo Femina. In both concept and composition, these photographs display his fascination with striking graphic layouts and narrative cinematic portraiture. Capturing people he encountered on the streets of Paris, Bourdin trained his eye to transcend the realism of the medium, developing a unique perspective through unconventional manipulations of the picture plane.
Guy Bourdin was born in Paris in 1928. His career as a fashion photographer spans over three decades. Bourdin shot largely for French Vogue as well as Harper's Bazaar, Chanel, Issey Miyake, Versace, Charles Jourdan and Emanuel Ungaro. Today Bourdin's work is held in prestigious museum including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Jeu de Paume, the Guggenheim and the National Museum of China. Bourdin died in 1991.
Published by Steidl. Edited by Nicolle Aimee Meyer, Shelly Verthime.
Guy Bourdin created images containing fascinating stories, compositions and colors. Using fashion photography as his medium, Bourdin explored the provocative and the sublime with a relentless perfectionism and sharp humor, breaking with the conventions of commercial photography and capturing the imagination of a generation. The late 1970s, widely recognized as the high note of his career, is the focal point of this new edition, which combines in one book the two volumes of the original 2006 publication. The first part of A Message for You shows the legendary, nearly forgotten images and rarely seen variants of a single model, Nicolle Meyer. She appeared in over 30 of Bourdin's famous campaigns for Charles Jourdan and in iconic French Vogue editorials. The second part of the book explores Bourdin's pictorial landscape in a collage of images that maps his artistic vision. The texts, Polaroids, poems, sketches and contact sheets are interspersed with Nicolle Meyer's recollections.
Published by Editions Xavier Barral. Text by Oliviero Toscani.
One of the Polaroid's acknowledged masters, Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) brought to the medium an uncanny ability to combine the snapshot feel with a strong patina of glamour, and of course plenty of sexiness. A protégé of Man Ray, and best known today for his controversial fashion photography, Bourdin like his teacher often brought an edge of menace or discomfort to his eroticism, with surrealistic props and implied narratives. Like the Surrealists, he often devised ways to bisect the female form, usually by cropping out above the waist; all these traits of Bourdin's fashion photography are to be found here, in this selection of 98 Polaroids, most of which have never previously been published. Ranging in formality from casual seaside erotica to darkened interiors with disembodied legs and arms poking into the frame, these images step outside the safety of the fashion shoot, conjuring a real-life realm steeped in an ominous sexuality.