In Bourdin’s photographs we find playgrounds for the eye to explore. Bursts of highly saturated color and playful compositional arrangements went firmly against the grain of the work produced by his contemporaries.

While the principal goal of the fashion photographer was to make their subject matter appear beautiful and elegant, Bourdin sought to make the photographs themselves fashionable, and to create a type of image that held its own modicum of desire to have, to own, and to show off.

Bourdin’s practice was one that made up its own rules while exploring the arenas of Surrealism, theatricality, absurdism, and sublimity. To the extent that a photographer’s job is to show viewers interpretations of the world, Bourdin’s pictures crafted worlds in which there was no such thing as ordinary, and that all visions were cloaked in alluring and provocative imagery. The genius that is stamped upon the legacy of Guy Bourdin is found in his inventiveness, enthusiasm, and fearlessness, qualities that define great art, great fashion, and great eroticism in equal measures.