Guy Bourdin-born 1928 died 1991
At the tender age of 21 having doggedly hounded Man Ray, was accepted by Ray as his protégé. By the time he was 27 he was working for the likes of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, not to mention doing advertisement shoots for a number of very high-profile (mainly fashion) companies. Such is his standing within the photographic/fashion industry, that The Tate Gallery are permanently exhibiting a part of their extensive collection of his work.
During his early years at Vogue, he found himself working alongside another Photographic icon, Helmut Newton. Between the two of them they turned the fashion world on its head. They broke the mould for what was then viewed as contemporary fashion photography. The work they produced thereafter set the tone for what, even now , is accepted as contemporary. Such was the strength of the Bourdin/Vogue partnership, he worked for the magazine until he was sixty. In almost all of his work you can see the influence of his early tutor, Man Ray coming through.
A vein that runs through a great deal of his work is his penchant for having as much as possible in focus within the frame. There is nothing odd about this on its own, but when you think that a lot of his work was fashion advertising (particularly Charles Jourdan shoes), you would have thought that a shallow depth of field would work best as it would isolate the product (being the thing that is in focus). Bourdin throws this idea out of the window and does the complete opposite. Not only that, but fills the background with irrelevant and incongruous distractions. Yet his clever use of colour, models, sexual suggestion and absurd ideas all come together to create images laced with undertones of psychological tension. It is not easy to work out exactly what it is that causes this unease, but you feel it time and again with many of his images. We must therefore give him the credit he deserves for creating a formula that makes his work what it is. The very things that are ‘being sold to us’, are the same things that have been (on initial viewing) made incongruous. Yet, on reflection, they have actually become the things that stand out! I find myself looking at a Bourdin advert and thinking why are you leading me away from this area of the picture, there is something I’m missing. When I am lead back to, say, the shoes for instants, then there is a feeling of delight or a sense of achievement for having ‘discovered’ what had been hidden (obviously you are supposed to arrive back at the shoes, that is the whole point). In actual fact you have just been a dumb passenger on a journey away, and ultimately back to where you need to be to ‘discover’ the hidden shoes!
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