Guy Bourdin

Guy Bourdin's photography is completely unique in its subject, technique and time. Bourdin lived in a time where

darkroom photography was the only way in which to get photographs developed and published, this process was

extremely long, possibly taking days, and if the results were deemed not good enough, the picture must be taken again.

Bourdin most likely used a Hasselblad camera, which was developed for the Swedish Air Force but grew in popularity within the fashion photography world. He also

definitely used a polaroid camera quite often, as is shown in one of my examples, probably because of its practicality and speed.

Working in Paris in the mid-1950s and into the 60s, Bourdin worked during a time where women were generally not considered as men's equal and some may feel that his work symbolises this. There are many cases in which the female model looks lifeless and in more than a few cases where it is highly suggested

through the picture that the model is dead.

Bourdin's photography was for fashion and advertisement, a majority of it is provocative and a majority can be considered of a sexual nature. He is considered one of greatest fashion photographers of all time.

It was very hard to layer all of the layers in a way that looked good but also reflected Bourdin’s work. The face was cut from an image of a woman in makeup to imitate Bourdin’s image.

This was created by taking a cut of the lips from a picture I found on the internet and shaping and warping to make them fit better. The hands were done by creating

additional layers from the original image and overlapping them to achieve this effect.

I made this by cropping, shrinking and combining images I found in online magazines and other articles. It was a very “trial and error” kind of work as it is hard to get each piece cut and sized perfectly to fit. I had to burn some of the edges of the hand to get

rid of the loose bits of paper.