SUPERSWEET’s Poonperm Paitayawat googles this incredible artist and photographer legend Guy Bourdin for you using five key words. Yes, it is as simple as that.
DEATH - ‘Tis sad Bourdin was no longer alive and shooting. His demise came in 1991, in Paris; he was 62. Any rumours of death before his? There were, the suicides of Bourdin’s wife and two of his ex girlfriends, but surely nobody would want to dig deep. In general, death, not just his own passing or those related to his close relatives, has been one central theme in Bourdin’s body of work. Stationed in Dakar between 1948-49, where he was first received photographic training for the French Military, Bourdin must have witnessed enough blood and death that was later transpired into his successive creations.
FRENCH VOGUE - Bourdin first started shooting for French Vogue in 1955 and was contracted until 1987. During those decades, he produced many of the most stunning and controversial images in the fashion history, which we his devotees instantaneously associate Bourdin with. Through Vogue, Bourdin secured backing of Charles Jourdan and was responsible for Jourdan’s shoe ad campaigns from 1967 till 1981. Bourdin also shot for Harper’s Bazaar, Italian and British Vogue, 20 Ans, and guess what, the list goes on. As for ad campaigns, Bourdin pulled strings behind the success of Chanel, Issey Miyake, Gianfranco Ferre, Loewe, and again a hell lot more!
THE FEMALE OBJECT - Capturing the female body, or bits of the body mutinied by camera angles, is an integral part in Bourdin’s fashion mise-en-scene. Naked models, styled with unmistakably sexual symbols, say, one bouquet of red roses tucked between the legs, or a dimmed light bulb, the non-eco friendly one, barely covering the vagina - form Bourdin’s phallo-centric narrative. There is this allure of the exposed body, frozen, gazed at and objectified by the camera; and, also, the lust, the urgency, the threat that compels the viewers. Fashion - clothes, shoes, and bags - becomes the master of the shoots, the source of danger and sexual evocation that taints the objectified the female body and injects not only colour but also provocativeness. In SS words, Bourdin can make a pair of sandals look very controversial.
SADISM - What naturally comes with the bare boobs and buttocks in Bourdin’s photography is sadism with a hint of necrophilia. Bodies are mutinied by the photographic manipulation, the camera angle and the narrative, and one simple image of a zoomed-in pair of high-heeled shoes suggestive of a fully clothed woman lying with her face down, with a backdrop of a busy swimming pool, turns enigmatic. Looking at one small bruise on her snow-white leg, we can construe scores of horrid stories. Why is she there in such an intriguingly unnatural pose? Why does no one notice her? Does anybody see her? Is she dead? Damn it, where does she get those high heeled from?
IN BETWEEN - This latest exhibition features Bourdin’s groundbreaking and never-before-seen body of work. Rare-ness here boasts black and white photography by this magic-making photographer, who are widely revered for his bold approach to hyper real colour foretelling the digital era. Many of the prints displayed at In Between are never “shown outside of their original appearances in previous publications.”
Yes, Bourdin is dead but you can still catch his retrospective In Between at the Payne Whitney Masion/Cultural Services of the French Embassy, 972 Fifth Avenue, New York, until 10 December.
Words: Poonperm Paitayawat
Images: © The Estate of Guy Bourdin