Guy Bourdin was born December 2, 1928 in Paris and died March 29, 1991. Bourdin was abandoned by his mother only a year after birth and was adopted by Maurice Désiré Bourdin. He received his first photography training as a cadet in the Franch Air Force and in 1950 he met Man Ray in Paris and became his protege (a person who receives support and protection from an influential patron who furthers the protege's career). Not long after meeting Man Ray Bourdin married Solange Marie Louise who committed suicide by hanging in 1971, after he kept her locked up in their Paris apartment.
Guy Bourdin was a short man with a whiny voice, and had a reputation of being incredibly demanding. Dark rumours surrounded him: his mother abandoning him as an infant, the suicides of his wife and two of his girlfriends, and the cruelty in which he treated his models. All of this intigued me as i had never thought about what he would have been like and it sounds like he was a pretty messed up individual.
His first fashion shots was published in the February issue of Vogue france in 1955 and he continued to work for the magazine until 1987. An editor of Vogue magazine introduced Bourdin to shoe designer Roland Jourdan, who became his patron, and Bourdin shot Jourdan’s ad campaigns between 1967 and 1981. His quirky crime scene ads were greatly recognized and always muchly awaited by the media.
He was one of the most influential fashion photographers in history and his erotic stylistic images shaped fashion. He shared helmut Newton's taste for controversy, but Bourdin exceeded the bounds of controversial advertising photography.After his death, Bourdin has been hailed as one of the greatest fashion photographers of all time, and his son Samuel Bourdin released a book with the finest prints of his fathers work - Exhibit A.
Bourdin was the first Photographer to create complex narrative, then snatch a moment - sensual, provacative, shocking, exotic, surrealistic, sinister Provocative, erotic, Shocking surrealistic and sinister - and simply associate it with a fashion item. The narratives were strange and mysterious, full of violence, sexuality, and surrealism. Bourdin was influenced by his mentor Man Ray, photographer Edward Weston, the surrealist painters Magritte and Balthus, and film maker Louis Bunuel. Even though much less well known to the public than his colleague Helmut Newton (also working for Vogue), Bourdin possibly has been more influential on the younger generations of fashion photographers in my eyes he grasped the stylistic fashion of post 2000 before it had happend and with each indiviual image created something new.
Bourdin was not a natural self-promoter, and did not collect his work or making any attempt to preserve them; in fact he refused several offers of exhibitions, rejected ideas for books, and wanted his work destroyed after his death (but since he didn’t keep so much of his work for himself, fortunately most of it was saved). The first major monograph devoted to his work was the book Exhibit A (mentioned above), released ten years after his death.
