French photographer Guy Bourdin has become one of the most mythical and influential fashion photographers of our time. His dark, stylized work is is richly colorful with seductive and surrealistic narratives usually containing morbid undertones. Bourdin's willingness to stretch reality pushed him to the limits of fashion photography into previously uncharted territory.
Born in Paris in 1928, Bourdin was abandoned by his mother at an early age. After being discharged from the French Air Force at age twenty, he decided to buy a small photographic business. Upon learning that his photography hero, American artist Man Ray, actually lived in Paris, Bourdin became obsessed with the idea of meeting him. On six different occasions in 1951 twenty-two-year-old Bourdin banged on Man Ray's door and each time the artist's wife, Juliet, turned him away. By the seventh time, Man Ray answered the door himself, and invited Bourdin in, eventually becoming his mentor. Bourdin brought his work to French Vogue in 1954 and was immediately hired. His first provocative editorial featured haute couture models alongside a row of butchered cow heads. His most famous trademark image was a 1958 shot of a pale redhead in profile, blood-red cherries seemingly spilling from her lips. Bourdin would continue to shoot for Vogue for the next three decades. In 1967, an editor of Vogue magazine introduced Bourdin to shoe designer Charles Jourdan who commissioned the photographer for a series of fashionably quirky and often creepy ad campaigns ran that until 1981.
Bourdin's desire for perfectionism along with his whimsical perception of beauty and death shattered the conventions of commercial photographs. His images set the tone for modern fashion editorials and captured the imaginations of many for generations to come.