Last November, as a friend and I wandered through an exhibition of unseen Guy works, the image of Veronica Corningstone in a Lucozade coloured skirt-suit bubbled into the brain.
For that small percentage of college-age readers who are unacquainted with the quagmire of farce that is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Ms Corningstone is the feisty lady reporter who falls for, yet usurps, the lead news anchor of a gloriously chauvinistic television network in seventies America. A pastiche of every brilliant alpha female of the era, she could be seen rolling her eyes at workplace phallocentricity, while having glossy, glossy hair. As all-woman Veronica, we can thank Christina Applegate for not only providing the pretty, but also for the percussive perfection with which she delivers the line, “Mr Harken, this city needs its news. You’re going to deprive them of that because I have breasts?. . Exquisite breasts?” Corningstone’s ambitions, frustrations, and unapologetic sexual self-esteem are here all at once betrayed - she can see no good reason for being denied, fundamentally speaking, her only misstep was to be born something other than male, with inevitably different bits. Bits which happen to be exquisite. End. And so we return to Parisian photographer Guy Bourdin, who undeniably took a similar interest in such female charms.
As in Anchorman, breasts in Bourdin’s work are presented as a badge of total femininity as well as the inevitable symbolic target for masculine belittlement, and it is often up to the viewer to decide which of the two they are witnessing. For interpretations of Bourdin’s portrayals of the feminine body can swing all too easily from disturbed – he persistently alludes to violation, objectification and disaffection - to delicate, sometimes exquisite. Consider for example the photograph of eerily pale breasts framed precisely by a deep-emerald and scarlet bedsheet. Is the woman beneath that sheet being depicted with a revering tenderness? Or does the impossibility of seeing her face (even if her head were uncovered, it would be out of frame) insinuate the insignificance of her identity; imply that her sex is the only thing the viewer will ever need? It isn’t in Bourdin’s nature to tell us - his photography takes no interest in obvious polemic, and making judgments of our own is close to futile when images such as these are to be found alongside Bourdin’s more austere work; such as the black and white photograph of (male) hands cradling the ribcage of another bare-chested woman. In the extreme close-up of this image, in the slight wide angle distortion that thrusts the powdery expanse of the woman’s sternum toward the viewer, there is an unexpected intimacy and dignity so unlike Bourdin’s more iconic images of jewel-toned, Jessica Rabbit lascivity.
Those images could too be found in this exhibition – abundantly. Held by Philips de Pury & Co, the selection housed at Victoria House last November comprised not only private stills, but pieces from Bourdin’s print advertising campaigns and vast fashion editorial work. Noses will wrinkle at the mention of fashion - but to dismiss Bourdin as mercenary happy-snapper is to underestimate the influence his images hold over modern visual culture. Much in the same way that Richard Avedon and Irving Penn transcended the commercial motivations of their careers to be recognised as inimitable artists, Bourdin consistently darted between consumerism and high art to finish atop a satisfying body of work with as much emotive clout and technical integrity as that of Salvador Dali or Man Ray. Bourdin, who died in 1991 aged sixty-two, is also credited with encapsulating the gleaming, hedonistic allure of the seventies and eighties, his red-lipped ladies echoic of Jerry Hall in a barely-decent jersey dress, stalking out of Studio 54. Without conceit nor vanity (in the 22 years of his collaboration with Vogue Paris, he never allowed his photograph to appear on the contributors’ page), Bourdin condescended to fashion to produce double-page spreads, calendars, and advertising campaigns for such labels as Ungaro, Gianfranco Ferré and Charles Jourdan that were as memorable as they were masterful. So memorable in fact, that that pop-culture plagiariser Madonna deemed several of his images worthy of appropriation for her ‘Hollywood’ music video in 2003. That Bourdin’s unique formalist/surrealist style was enough to garner him the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1985, and would translate nearly two decades later to 21st century mass media, demonstrates his knack for straddling the high-low dichotomy. Vibrant colour, clever spatial manipulation and meticulous composition are all at work beneath Bourdin’s titillating content, which could at any time reference pulp fiction, B-movie storylines, and fetish culture. It’s no wonder that his high-impact imagery - incorporating crotch shots, below-waist nudity, girl-on-girl etc- has become a kind of shorthand for modern sexual expression, especially for our attention deficient generation with its anything goes attitude.
But this isn’t done vulgarly, Bourdin’s images are a far cry from today’s porn-ified media in which breasts are promoted as blunt objects to bludgeon the buying public into arousal. For all the accusations of being too provocative – his photographs for Vogue would often result in angry letters and cancelled subscriptions - Bourdin was never unthinking in his depictions of eroticism. His most perverse tableaux are at the same time highly conceptual, to the point where it can come as a surprise that they were intended for the vapid showcasing of clothes, accessories and make-up. In any case, these photographed taboos are presented in such a manner that the responses they stir say more about us, than they tell of him. At the Victoria House exhibition we faced one editorial piece of a reclined woman, naked except for a black lace panties and a fishnet body stocking, her head cropped out of view, with a handheld mirror on top of her crotch. What was most disconcerting wasn’t the voyeuristic position that we suddenly found ourselves in, but the fact that the mirror reflected another woman’s face. The device provoked confusion, our pseudo-feminist wrath, and an admiration that such placement was achieved in a time untainted by Photoshop. Yet the narrative of the photograph will remain purposefully obscure. Bourdin could be reproaching the smut-minded by interrupting the immediate stare towards the vagina with the face of a real woman. Otherwise he may be enacting the objectification of women by cynically dividing his subject into components of sexual desire: breast, thighs, privates, with the face only secondary in importance. All we can be sure of is that half the fun is in the speculation.
Supposedly one of the reasons why Bourdin embraced fashion photography was its perishable nature, that it is cyclically consumed and disposed with each publication: he felt it intensified the mystery of his work, ensured that whatever understanding his audience had gained would be fleeting. He might consider it a failure then, that upon viewing his images we are so intrigued and viscerally stunned, that they linger in the mind for a long time following.
For that small percentage of college-age readers who are unacquainted with the quagmire of farce that is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Ms Corningstone is the feisty lady reporter who falls for, yet usurps, the lead news anchor of a gloriously chauvinistic television network in seventies America. A pastiche of every brilliant alpha female of the era, she could be seen rolling her eyes at workplace phallocentricity, while having glossy, glossy hair. As all-woman Veronica, we can thank Christina Applegate for not only providing the pretty, but also for the percussive perfection with which she delivers the line, “Mr Harken, this city needs its news. You’re going to deprive them of that because I have breasts?. . Exquisite breasts?” Corningstone’s ambitions, frustrations, and unapologetic sexual self-esteem are here all at once betrayed - she can see no good reason for being denied, fundamentally speaking, her only misstep was to be born something other than male, with inevitably different bits. Bits which happen to be exquisite. End. And so we return to Parisian photographer Guy Bourdin, who undeniably took a similar interest in such female charms.
As in Anchorman, breasts in Bourdin’s work are presented as a badge of total femininity as well as the inevitable symbolic target for masculine belittlement, and it is often up to the viewer to decide which of the two they are witnessing. For interpretations of Bourdin’s portrayals of the feminine body can swing all too easily from disturbed – he persistently alludes to violation, objectification and disaffection - to delicate, sometimes exquisite. Consider for example the photograph of eerily pale breasts framed precisely by a deep-emerald and scarlet bedsheet. Is the woman beneath that sheet being depicted with a revering tenderness? Or does the impossibility of seeing her face (even if her head were uncovered, it would be out of frame) insinuate the insignificance of her identity; imply that her sex is the only thing the viewer will ever need? It isn’t in Bourdin’s nature to tell us - his photography takes no interest in obvious polemic, and making judgments of our own is close to futile when images such as these are to be found alongside Bourdin’s more austere work; such as the black and white photograph of (male) hands cradling the ribcage of another bare-chested woman. In the extreme close-up of this image, in the slight wide angle distortion that thrusts the powdery expanse of the woman’s sternum toward the viewer, there is an unexpected intimacy and dignity so unlike Bourdin’s more iconic images of jewel-toned, Jessica Rabbit lascivity.
Those images could too be found in this exhibition – abundantly. Held by Philips de Pury & Co, the selection housed at Victoria House last November comprised not only private stills, but pieces from Bourdin’s print advertising campaigns and vast fashion editorial work. Noses will wrinkle at the mention of fashion - but to dismiss Bourdin as mercenary happy-snapper is to underestimate the influence his images hold over modern visual culture. Much in the same way that Richard Avedon and Irving Penn transcended the commercial motivations of their careers to be recognised as inimitable artists, Bourdin consistently darted between consumerism and high art to finish atop a satisfying body of work with as much emotive clout and technical integrity as that of Salvador Dali or Man Ray. Bourdin, who died in 1991 aged sixty-two, is also credited with encapsulating the gleaming, hedonistic allure of the seventies and eighties, his red-lipped ladies echoic of Jerry Hall in a barely-decent jersey dress, stalking out of Studio 54. Without conceit nor vanity (in the 22 years of his collaboration with Vogue Paris, he never allowed his photograph to appear on the contributors’ page), Bourdin condescended to fashion to produce double-page spreads, calendars, and advertising campaigns for such labels as Ungaro, Gianfranco Ferré and Charles Jourdan that were as memorable as they were masterful. So memorable in fact, that that pop-culture plagiariser Madonna deemed several of his images worthy of appropriation for her ‘Hollywood’ music video in 2003. That Bourdin’s unique formalist/surrealist style was enough to garner him the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1985, and would translate nearly two decades later to 21st century mass media, demonstrates his knack for straddling the high-low dichotomy. Vibrant colour, clever spatial manipulation and meticulous composition are all at work beneath Bourdin’s titillating content, which could at any time reference pulp fiction, B-movie storylines, and fetish culture. It’s no wonder that his high-impact imagery - incorporating crotch shots, below-waist nudity, girl-on-girl etc- has become a kind of shorthand for modern sexual expression, especially for our attention deficient generation with its anything goes attitude.
But this isn’t done vulgarly, Bourdin’s images are a far cry from today’s porn-ified media in which breasts are promoted as blunt objects to bludgeon the buying public into arousal. For all the accusations of being too provocative – his photographs for Vogue would often result in angry letters and cancelled subscriptions - Bourdin was never unthinking in his depictions of eroticism. His most perverse tableaux are at the same time highly conceptual, to the point where it can come as a surprise that they were intended for the vapid showcasing of clothes, accessories and make-up. In any case, these photographed taboos are presented in such a manner that the responses they stir say more about us, than they tell of him. At the Victoria House exhibition we faced one editorial piece of a reclined woman, naked except for a black lace panties and a fishnet body stocking, her head cropped out of view, with a handheld mirror on top of her crotch. What was most disconcerting wasn’t the voyeuristic position that we suddenly found ourselves in, but the fact that the mirror reflected another woman’s face. The device provoked confusion, our pseudo-feminist wrath, and an admiration that such placement was achieved in a time untainted by Photoshop. Yet the narrative of the photograph will remain purposefully obscure. Bourdin could be reproaching the smut-minded by interrupting the immediate stare towards the vagina with the face of a real woman. Otherwise he may be enacting the objectification of women by cynically dividing his subject into components of sexual desire: breast, thighs, privates, with the face only secondary in importance. All we can be sure of is that half the fun is in the speculation.
Supposedly one of the reasons why Bourdin embraced fashion photography was its perishable nature, that it is cyclically consumed and disposed with each publication: he felt it intensified the mystery of his work, ensured that whatever understanding his audience had gained would be fleeting. He might consider it a failure then, that upon viewing his images we are so intrigued and viscerally stunned, that they linger in the mind for a long time following.
For more information Guy Bourdin by Alison Gingeras is published by Phaidon at £14.95.
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