Guy Bourdin - a Message For You

With the eye of a painter, Guy Bourdin created images that contained fascinating stories, compositions, and colours. Using fashion photography as his medium, he sent out his message, one that was difficult to decode, exploring the realms between the absurd and the sublime. Famed for his suggestive narratives and surreal aesthetics, he radically broke conventions of commercial photography with a relentless perfectionism, and sharp humour. This tome is a road trip through Bourdins visual landscape; a collage of images that maps his artistic search and vision. The texts, polaroids, poems, sketches and contact sheets unfold in real time through the memories of model Nicolle Meyer, a muse to Bourdin. Given total creative freedom, and with uncompromising artistic ethic, Guy Bourdin captured the imagination of a whole generation. The late 1970s, recognized as the highest note in his career, is the focal point of the work. This revisited edition, originally printed as two volumes, is the first monograph in a forthcoming set of eight books which explore the most outstanding and undiscovered work thus far. Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) was born in Paris. His career as a fashion photographer spans over three decades, shooting largely for Vogue Paris, as well as Harpers Bazaar, Chanel, Issey Miyake, Versace, Charles Jourdan, and Emanuel Ungaro. Today, his work is exhibited in the most prestigious museums, such as The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Jeu de Paume, and The National Museum of China, and his images have a cult-like following amongst the fashion set.