One of the Greatest Innovators of Fashion Photography;New Book Provides the Perfect IntroductionTo a Legendary Career.Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) was one of the worlds greatest innovators offashion photography.While his contemporaries Richard Avedon and HelmutNewton achieved great notoriety and fame, Bourdin remains relativelyunknown to the general public.But within the worlds of fashion andphotography, he is a legend.Known for his difficult personality andgroundbreaking images that mixed glamour, seduction and surrealism, theimpact of Bourdins work on both commercial and fine art photographycontinues to resonate today. GUY BOURDIN, by Guggenheim curator Alison M. Gingeras, provides anillustrated overview of Bourdins entire career featuring both iconicimages, lesser-known photos and an introductory essay that provides a freshperspective on his life and work, 15 years after his death. Guy Bourdin worked for French Vogue for over 30 years where he demanded andwas allowed full editorial control of his work.During the 1970s and1980s, his photographs also filled the pages of international fashionmagazines in campaigns for Charles Jourdan, Bloomingdales, Versace, Chaneland Dior.Bourdins approach to advertising campaigns reflected a distinctchange in this period by rejecting the product shot in favor ofatmospheric, often surreal tableaux and suggestions of narrative.Bourdinwas not alone in demystifying the object, but he was the most radical inhis approach. Gingeras accessible introduction looks back on Bourdins career and placeshim both in the context of his time and within the history of photography. She reveals that its no accident that he is not a household name todaybecause "during his lifetime, Bourdin refused to exhibit or sell hisfashion photographs as autonomous prints...turning down offers to publishmonographic studies of his work."The only "book" he ever made was alingerie catalogue for Bloomingdales in 1976.By the time he died Bourdinsucceeded in guaranteeing the anonymity he always wanted.But now, yearslater, his influence reigns on.In a recent The New York Times article,fashion writer Tim Blanks said, "Bourdin makes more sense now than he did20 years ago... (he) had a scarily acute understanding of the heart ofdarkness that pulsates under societys glossy exterior." There are numerous previously unpublished photos in Phaidons GUY BOURDIN,in particular early works that were discovered in the Bourdin personalarchive. The book succeeds in filling out the formative years of Bourdinsoeuvre as well as celebrating his most iconic images. Guy Bourdins fashion shoots were mysterious, hypnotic, surreal, exposingthe true and unnerving nature of desire.He showed that, within thecontext of fashion, it is rarely the product that compels us.It is theimage - carefully staged narrative of sexual fantasy, the quest for theunattainable with a suggestion of danger - that stimulates consumerdesire.