Guy Bourdin - Photographs London Friday, May 15, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the Estate of the artist

  • Literature

    Bulfinch, Exhibit A: Guy Bourdin, 2001, n.p.

  • Catalogue Essay

    French photographer Guy Bourdin’s idiosyncratic propensity for surrealist imagery blended into the genre of colour fashion and beauty photography made him the darling of the era’s top fashion editors and art directors who relied on his talent for creating eye catching and arresting images that seemingly leapt from magazine pages. The singular vision of Guy Bourdin is underscored in this photograph of nude model Nicolle Meyer that was originally featured in his well-known 1980 wall calendar created for the Pentax camera company. Here Bourdin, long before digital technology allowed for seamlessly altered images, has staged the coiffed and heavily made-up model as she lies prostrate-blood red enamel nail polish streaming from her head – a crime of fashion and passion. The genre of crime scene photography was a recurring source that Bourdin regularly turned to both in his groundbreaking editorial work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar as well as his memorable ad campaigns for the Charles Jourdan shoe company during his forty year career. Although he resisted selling his photographs during his lifetime, in recent years there has been a significant and renewed interest in his enormous influence on fashion photography including a major retrospective currently on an international tour at Paris’s Jeu de Paume, London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, and Vienna’s Kunst Haus as well as stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Moscow.

68

Pentax Calendar

1980
Fujiflex Crystal Archive print, printed later.
34.3 x 48.9 cm. (13 1/2 x 19 1/4 in).
Signed, numbered 4/18 in ink by Samuel Bourdin and Guy Bourdin Estate stamp on a label affixed to the reverse of the flush-mount.

Estimate
£7,000 - 9,000 Ω

Photographs

16 May 2009, 3pm
London