Guy Bourdin was a groundbreaking image-maker who had a profoundly influential impact on fashion photography. His fashion editorial and advertising was published principally in French Vogue from the mid-1950s through to the late 1980s, where it had its greatest impact in the decade of the 1970s. Born in 1928 in Paris, Bourdin grew up in an age of intense cultural anxiety, precipitated by the uncertainties and disruption of the wartime occupation of France, and the subsequent challenge to human rationality typified by the philosophies of Existentialism. His early inspiration was from Surrealism, and specifically the work of Man Ray, with whom he struck up a relationship, the Surrealist whose vision had reconfigured notions of what a photograph might be. The art Bourdin made without his camera enjoyed a modest success, with exhibitions in Paris and New York, but it was in his experiments with the camera, which he first brought to Vogue in 1954, that he excelled. Bourdin rejected the descriptive roles of photography in favour of an exploration of the medium's capacity for the divergent. In the practice of certain American photographers, notably Edward Weston, Bourdin recognised a concern with formal perfection and extremely high finish that became his own objective, one perfectly adapted to the deceptive sophistication of fashion imagery, the terrain in which he developed his ideas for over thirty years.

At French Vogue, Bourdin demanded and was allowed unique editorial control-and amazingly, he extended this to his principal client in advertising, shoe company Charles Jourdan, who first commissioned him in the 1960s. Bourdin's approach to campaigns reflected a distinct change for advertising in this period. Where it had once been dominated by selling the intangibles of class, alongside the merchandise, Bourdin rejected the 'product shot' in favour of atmospheric tableaux and suggestions of narrative. Bourdin was not alone in demystifying the object, but he was the most radical in his approach. The photographs of Guy Bourdin and contemporaries such as Helmut Newton, proved that advertising need not be an elaboration of a safe, prescribed fantasy. Bourdin emphasised fetishism, power relationships, and the potential for sexual violence, as well as the artificiality of the image, its gloss rather than its reality. Bourdin's success at exposing the contrivance of fashion imagery precipitated this becoming a mainstream rhetorical manoeuvre within mass-circulation magazines, but the unique preserve of his images was to refuse to explain themselves, despite their formal sharpness and clarity. Their enduring strength lies in their beguiling potential to intrigue and disturb.

Chronology: Compiled by Fernando Delgado and Pjerpol Rubens

1928  Born Guy Louis Banarès on 2 December at 7 rue Popincourt, Paris.

1929  Adopted by Maurice Desiré Bourdin who, with his mother Marguerite Legay, raises Guy.

1948-9  Undertakes military service in the French air force and receives his first photographic training. He is stationed in Dakar, Senegal.

1950  First exhibition of drawings and paintings at Galerie, rue de la Bourgogne, Paris.

1952  Exhibition of photographs and drawings at Galerie 29, 29 rue de Seine, Paris. The catalogue includes a dedication to Guy Bourdin by Man Ray.

1953  Exhibition of photographs under the pseudonym Edwin Hallan at Galerie Huit, 8 rue St Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris.

1954  Exhibition of drawings at Galerie de Beaune, 5 rue de Beaune, Paris.
Contributes photographs to the C.S. Association UK touring exhibitions, in 1954-5 and 1955-7, both shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.

1955  First fashion photographs are published in French Vogue in February issue.
Exhibition of drawings at Galerie des Amis des Arts, 26 cours Mirabeau, Paris.
Group exhibition entitled Cats at Galerie de Seine, 24 rue de Seine, Paris.
Exhibition of paintings at Galerie Charpentier, Paris.

1956  Exhibition of drawings at Galerie de Seine, 24 rue de Seine, Paris.

1957  Exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Peter Deitsch Gallery, 51 East 73rd Street, New York.
Contributes photographs to group exhibition entitled Vogue at the International Photography Biennale, Venice.

1961  Marries Solange Marie Louise Geze.
Group exhibition entitled Le Photographe en face de son métier at the Salon Nationale de la Photographie, Paris.

1965  Exhibition of drawings at Galerie Jacques Desbrière, 27 rue Guénégaud, Paris.

1966  Contributes photographs to the art fair Photokina 66, Cologne.

1967  Samuel, Guy Bourdin's only child, is born.
First advertising campaign for Charles Jourdan shoes.
First editorial fashion photography for Harper's Bazaar and Photo.

1969  Contributes photographs to a group exhibition l'insolite et la mode at Galerie Delpire, 13 rue de l'Abbaye, Paris.

1971  Solange Marie Louise Geze dies.

1972  First editorial fashion photographs for Italian Vogue.

1973  Advertising campaign for MAFIA advertising agency, Paris.

1974  First editorial fashion photographs for British Vogue.

1975  Advertising campaign for Issey Miyake.

1976  Lingerie catalogue Sighs and Whispers for Bloomingdale's department store, New York.
Advertising campaigns include Baila by Gianfranco Ferré, Complice & Callaghan by Gianni Versace, and Loewe.

1977  First editorial fashion photographs for Vogue Hommes and 20 Ans.
Contributes photographs to touring exhibition entitled The History of Fashion Photography shown at US venues including the International Museum of Photography, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

1978  Advertising campaign for Claude Montana.
Contributes photographs to the art fair Photokina 78, Cologne.
Calendars for Issey Miyake and Yashica.

1980  Calendar for Pentax.

1981  Final advertising campaign for Charles Jourdan.
First editorial fashion photographs for Linea Italiana.

1982  Advertising campaigns for Gianfranco Ferré, Lancetti, and Roland Pierre.
Contributes photographs to group exhibition entitled Color as Form at the International Museum of Photography, New York.

1985  Advertising campaign for Emanuel Ungaro.
Refuses the Grand Prix National de la Photographie awarded by the French Ministry of Culture.

1986  Contributes photographs to the art fair Photokina 86, Cologne.

1987  Terminates his contract with French Vogue.
First editorial fashion photographs for The Best.
Advertising campaigns for Révillon and Chanel.

1988  Receives the Infinity Award (for his 1987 Chanel advertising campaign) from the International Center of Photography, New York, presented by Annie Leibovitz.
Contributes photographs to the Triennale International de la Photographie, Paris.

1991  Dies in Paris on 29 March, aged 62.


Reproduced from 'Guy Bourdin' by Charlotte Cotton and Shelly Verthime (eds.), V&A Publications, 2003, with kind permission of the author.