'Image Marker' present over 100 works and previously unseen material from the photographer's estate, from 1955 to 1987. The exhibited works will exemplify the craftsmanship behind his images, from production to publication, enduring quality as a consequence.
Curated by Alistair O’Neill with Shelly Verthime
Somerset House will stage the UK’s largest ever exhibition of the influential and enigmatic
fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, featuring over 100 works and previously unseen material
from the photographer’s estate, from 1955 to 1987. This major show will chart Bourdin’s
distinguished 40-year career from Man Ray’s protégé to photography revolutionary in his own
right and explore his pursuit of perfection. Entitled Guy Bourdin: Image-Maker, the exhibited
works will exemplify the craftsmanship behind his images, from production to publication, and
their enduring quality as a consequence.
Guy Bourdin’s editorial and advertising imagery represents a highpoint in late 20th century
fashion photography. His work took the basic function of the fashion photograph - to sell
clothing, beauty and accessories - and made it into something rich and strange. Bourdin did this
without resorting to exoticism; instead, he established the idea that the product is secondary to
the image. From his professional debut for Vogue Paris in the 1950s, Bourdin developed a
distinctive style of visual storytelling which continues to serve as a source of inspiration to
contemporary fashion photographers from Tim Walker to Nick Knight.
Curated by Alistair O’Neill with Shelly Verthime, the exhibition will include over 100 colour
exhibition prints of Bourdin’s most significant works, as well as early and late works in black and
white that serve to challenge Bourdin’s reputation as a colour photographer. This is
complimented by a range of other photographic materials: unique Polaroid test shots, double-
page spread layouts, contact sheets and transparencies marked for composition. Together
they explore Bourdin’s craftsmanship as an image-maker and the processes involved in
producing startling and provocative imagery in a pre-digital age. It also highlights Bourdin as a
pioneer of fashion film, showcasing a range of Super-8 films he made at the same time as his
on-location photo shoots.
In addition, the exhibition will feature a selection of paintings, working drawings, sketches and
notebooks, not seen in the UK before, which inform his approach as an compositional image-
maker and meticulous draughtsman.
While his medium was the magazine and the billboard, he took a rigorous and avant-garde
approach to his commissioned spreads and campaigns and without compromise, he demanded
complete artistic control over them, including the hair and make up of the models. To magazine
picture desks, he would only submit one negative for each image and would indicate its precise
placement on the page. Yet such was his talent and their trust in him, these conditions were
granted time and time again by fashion magazines and houses, most notably by the French
shoe designer Charles Jourdan and Vogue Paris, with whom he enjoyed a long-standing
collaboration.
Unlike his contemporaries such as Helmut Newton or Richard Avedon, Bourdin never took
measures to immortalise his work. In his lifetime, he never published a book, he never hosted an
exhibition of his colour photography, and he rejected the Grand Prix National de la
Photographie from the French government. American curator and collector Sam Wagstaff once
sent an open cheque to Bourdin and asked him to fill out the amount, but it was returned rippedup into pieces. Bourdin, like many of his peers, did not believe that a photography market would
develop to encompass his commercial work, so he placed little emphasis on promoting it after
publication. However, contrary to the accepted idea that Bourdin did not care for legacy, his
surviving archive, which this exhibition makes full use of, demonstrates that Bourdin did care
for the survival of his work to inspire others.
Works recently released from the Guy Bourdin Archive include ‘Walking Legs’ - a Charles
Jourdan campaign series – which will be displayed for the first time at Somerset House as a key
feature of the exhibition alongside a yet unseen accompanying fashion film. Shot in 1979, the
French designer and photographer used quintessentially English landscapes as the backdrop to
its high-end campaign. Photographed in locations on a road trip taken in a Cadillac from
London to Brighton, many of the city and seaside scenes remain the same today and will be
familiar sights from Battersea Power Station to the stucco-fronted houses along Brighton’s
seafront. As with much of Bourdin’s work, the model is mysteriously absent – all that is left is a
pair of mannequin legs, adorned with Charles Jourdan’s creations. Though only a small sample
of the series has ever been seen, the work stands as a series of 22 photographs and will be
shown in its entirety.
Guy Bourdin remains an influential figure in fashion photography and the continuing resonance
of his work is now acknowledged in contemporary definitions of visual culture. With unseen
pictures recently released into the public realm, Guy Bourdin: Image-Maker will therefore be the
most in-depth and insightful exhibition staged since his death in 1991.
Press contact:
Stephanie Lilley, 020 78454619 press@somersethouse.org.uk
Somerset House
Strand, London WC2R 1LA
Daily 10.00-18.00 (Last admission 17.15)
Until 21.00 Thursdays (Last admission 20.15)
24 & 31 December 10.00-16.00, 25 & 26 December-closed, 1 January 12.00-18.00
Embankment Galleries, South Wing
£9.00, £7.00 concessions