Original Publication: Newsweek, October 4, 1976
MAUREEN ORTH with LISA WHITMAN in New York and JANE FRIEDMAN in Paris
The model in the Fellini make-up and the Ralph Lauren pajamas was supposed to fly into her lover’s arms in bed. But she had done it so many times she fainted. “Let her fall, let her fall,” commanded photographer Guy Bourdin, clicking away with his camera. “That’s the one pure shot in the book. The purest pictures are of someone dying or unconscious.” The French fashion photographer had been hired by Bloomindale’s to shoot its new lingerie catalog, and from the beginning he was uncompromising in his demands. Declaring that “there are no beautiful women in New York,” Bourdin turned down 65 top American models before finding six unknown girls for the job. He insisted on a stuffed panther at one sitting even though it never appeared in the catalog. He stuck a pin in one negative he didn’t want Bloomingdale’s even to consider, and he refused to let the store look at any of the prints before he flew back to France – with six skateboards.
‘Dracula’: The result is pure Bourdin – a collection of beautifully composed, sexually suggestive situations featuring hard-edged models who look as if they enjoy getting beaten up for breakfast. And the catalog, recently distributed with the Sunday New York Times and mailed to Bloomingdale’s charge customers, has the fashion world buzzing about Bourdin. “Guy has been doing that raunchy Dracula look for years in Europe,” sniffs New York fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, who also shoots Cosmopolitan’s cover girls. “I think he wants to put women down or something.” The lingerie manufacturers disagree. “It’s about time the intimate-apparel industry was taken out of the closet,” says Jack Cassidy, vice president of Lily of France. “It’s always had that hush-hush underwear image.”
The decision by the trend-setting department store to use Bourdin is a firm indication that the kinky, macabre look in fashion photography is edging into the mainstream. The designers are no longer making an authoritative fashion statement and clothes have become so simple and predictable that the fashion industry is calling for a more exciting photographic image. At the same time, art directors and retailers are competing for the attention an apathetic public numbed by pornography, television violence and films such as “The Exorcist.” And seen in the context of conventional fashion magazines and catalogs, the bizarre images are doubly arresting.
The result, best seen in the work of three photographers now extending the boundaries of conventional fashion imagery, is a blend of shock, alienation and strained sexuality. Bourdin and German-born Helmut Newton produce erotic fantasies that are often cruel and flirt with danger. American photographer Deborah Tubeville is more feminine and romantic in her work, but her models are withdrawn and eerily isolated from those around them. All three photographers eschew traditional white backdrops for evocative locations, and all have been deeply influenced by European films.
Although European publications have long featured their work, the surreal, decadent look made an impact in American fashion only eighteen months ago when Vogue ran spreads by Newton and Turbeville spotlighting resort clothes. (Bourdin is still considered “too cruel” for the American Vogue’s editorial taste, although his witty ads for Charles Jourdan shoes are accepted.) Newton’s series, entitled “The Story of Oh-h-h,” featured a male model openly fondling a woman and a seductive menage a trois on vacation, while Turbeville photographed the season’s bathing suits in a cold public bathhouse. From there, ambiguous sexual settings and desperate loneliness have filtered down to commercial ads, catalogs and window displays. “These artists are pioneers,” says Alexander Liberman, editorial director of Vogue. “They are taking erotic dream voyages, going deeper into subconscious realms. This is an era of displaying vulnerability. And then there’s the whole sexual revolution.”
Garter Belts: Newton, who is one of the star photographers of French Vogue, sees women as gorgeous animals – with the emphasis on the animal. His erotic photos are often lush and decadent, implying danger and recalling Berlin of the ’30s. In his new book, “White Women,” to be published this month, he shows couturier clothes on models who bare one breast, clutch whips and pose erotically in black garter belts and boots, often with overtones of lesbianism. “I have always been interested in the sexual side,” says the 55-year-old Newton, who was born in Berlin and migrated to France via Singapore and Australia. “If people think my photos are erotic or disgusting, thank God they’re touched by them.”
Newton is married to photographer Alice Springs, with whom he lives in a beautiful old quarter in Paris. He has photographed such celebrated subjects as Paloma Picasso, and is currently being considered to do the advertising campaigns for several top cosmetic, automobile and liquor companies. But his real aim, he says, is to paint “the rich side of life, the bourgeoisie – to glamorize the 30-year-old women who have too much time and money and are bored. It’s ‘Belle de Jour,’ the erotic interest.”
Deborah Turbeville has a far more romantic and tentative eye. After beginning her photography career in 1972, while still an editor of Mademoiselle, the 38-year-old Turbeville has shot to the top in a few short years. She studied dance and her dreamlike photos, bathed in hazy, impressionistic tonalities, are choreographed like ballet. But they look like scenes out of Bertolucci or Antonioni’s alienated “The Red Desert.” Her people are glued to their environments in a mood of overwhelming dreamlike silence. “I feel that sense of isolation,” says Turbeville. “I see it all around me. I see the clutching anxiety, this terrible insecurity in women today. They have so many options they don’t know which way to go.”
Vogue gave Turbeville her big break last year by assigning her to photograph the American collections. Recently, she has done ads for designer Calvin Klein, Andrew Geller shoes and Saga Mink, and has given an instant cachet to New York’s huge Barney’s department store by photographing its catalog. Now at Arden, Turbeville says, “When people hire me they’re buying an image.” But she finds it difficult to compromise. She chafed against the restrictions imposed by Barney’s and says, “I don’t know if I can be contained in fashion.”
Guy Bourdin, 41, never compromises – and snubs the media, feeling his “soul will be raped.” He cares little for money and still lives in a shabby sixth-floor walk-up apartment in Paris with his Austrian girlfriend and his 9-year-old son. Before French Vogue spotted some of his work in 1960, he underwent a long period of poverty. Now Vogue uses him in almost every issue.
Pink Eedgles: In 1966, Bourdin began doing the ads for Charles Jourdan shoes that made him famous. One eye-popping still life featured the scene of a car accident, with a chalk mark outlining the absent body of the victim and two pink wedgies lying on the pavement. Horror stories abound from models who’ve worked for him, but at least 50 models line up outside the offices Vogue in Paris when Bourdin is working there. Even the girl who fainted in the Bloomingdale’s shooting, says one onlooker, “showed no hostility toward him when she came to.”
Do alienation, cruelty and decadence really move merchandise? For better or worse, they seem to have an effect. Jourdan’s sales have increased tenfold since Bourdin became the store’s image-maker, whatever the latent violence and misogyny in his themes. Bloomingdale’s executives are beaming over the response to Bourdin’s lingerie catalog; sales are brisk in their new lingerie department, and the catalog has become an underground collector’s item. Barney’s is equally pleased with Turbeville’s work. “We are trying to get Barney’s talked about more than selling clothes with this catalog,” says advertising director Milton Guttenplan. “It credits the reader with intelligence.”
But nobody expects sado-masochism or catatonic chic to sweep the country. “Magazines have given these photographers cachet and others buy it,” says Roger Shoening, art director at Mademoiselle. “But it’s really for the 10 per cent, the leaders. Women will never identify with it.” However, if women do begin to identify, the remaining, staunch resistance may begin to crumble. “The clean, happy look is still sexiest,” insists Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. “The Cosmo girl is just so hetero that the lesbian echoes and macabre looks simply turn me off.” But, she adds, “I’m not fat-headed. If our sales start suffering, I’ll have to think about doing it differently.”
This article is typed from the original material. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
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