Ladies and gentlemen please take your seats as the doors to Guy Bourdin: Image-Maker are about to open. Staging the world’s largest exhibition of one of the world’s most iconic fashion photographers, the Somerset House show,which opens to the public tomorrow, comprises over 100 black and white prints, spanning a 30-year period, along with previously unseen material from the photographer’s estate. Feast your eyes on scribbled annotations, peer at Polaroids through glass screens, and get lost in the bright colours of his paintings. A protégé of Man Ray, Bourdin’s work blurs the boundaries between the real and the surreal, with each image taking the humble fashion product and making it into something strange and provocative. For a man who typically shied away from the limelight, it’s high time he’s brought out of the shadows.
Guy Bourdin: Image-Maker is showing at Somerset House, London, from 27 November 2014 – 15 March 2015