Guy Bourdin

Guy Louis Bourdin, born December 2, 1928 in Paris was a French fashion photographer. Starting with a year military service in Dakar, it was here where he received his first photography training as a cadet in the French Air Force. Returning to Paris is 1950 Bourdin made his first exhibition of drawings and paintings at Galerie, Rue de la Bourgogne, Paris.

After this his first photographic exhibition was in 1953 and he continued with fashion shoots for 
Vogue Paris in 1955 and were published in the February issue, his work continued to appear in the magazine until 1987. An editor of Vogue magazine introduced Bourdin to the shoe designer Charles Jourdan, who became his patron, and Bourdin shot Jourdan's ad campaigns between 1967 and 1981.

Bourdin's work is quirky and has anthropomorphic compositions were greatly recognised and always greatly anticipated by the media. He one of the best known photographers of fashion and advertising of the second half of the 20th century. He shared Helmut Newton's taste for controversy and stylisation, but Bourdin's formal daring and the narrative power of his images exceeded the bounds of conventional advertising photography. Shattering expectations and questioning boundaries, he set the stage for a new kind of fashion photography. Bourdin worked for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Issey Miyake, Emanuel Ungaro, Gianni Versace, Loewe, Pentax and Bloomingdale's.

Since his death, Guy Bourdin has been hailed as one of the greatest fashion photographers of all time, and his son Samuel Bourdin released a book with the finest prints of his father's work, called "Exhibit A" in 2001. His work created complex narratives that were sensual, provocative, shocking, exotic, surrealistic, sometimes sinister and simply only touch on the fashion items. Bourdin's strange and mysterious, sometimes violent, sexual, and surreal narratives have possibly been more influential on the younger generations of fashion photographers.


The reputation of being incredibly demanding and dark rumours surrounded him about the cruelty in which he treated his models but he wasn't a
natural self-promoter, in fact he refused several offers of exhibitions, rejected ideas for books, and wanted his work destroyed after his death, however, mentioned before his brother devoted a book to his ten years after his death.