A giant of modern fashion photography, Guy Bourdin lent his surrealist eye to the shoes and fashions of Charles Jourdan. Guy Bourdin for Charles Jourdan celebrates the pioneering collaboration between the two artists which today still exerts a profound influence on modern fashion photography. The book contains over 150 images, many never before published, showcasing the modernity and fetishism that made Jourdan’s designs so sought after, and Bourdin’s mise-en-scènes so provocative. 

The late 1960s saw some of the most dynamic periods in French fashion. And the union between Bourdin and Jourdan captured the spirit of the moment unlike any other creative partnership of the era. Jourdan, a polymath who occupied the office of both couturier and shoe designer, tapped Bourdin, a true surrealist among the fashion photographers of the age, and engaged in a creative dialogue through to Jourdan’s passing in 1976. To draw attention to the sweep of a woman’s feet and the gentle swell of her calves, the shod feet and lower leg of a mannequin are disembodied and transported to a variety of contexts, the central figures in compositions that are at once erotic, humorous, and often unsettling.

Provocative, fabulist, dramatic, and full of intense colour and saturation, theirs was as complete a collaboration as has ever been achieved in the history of postwar fashion. This book presents that work in its entirety for the very first time and provides insight into a true meeting of the minds between designer and photographer.

Rizzoli, 216pp, 30cm x 22cm, illustrated hardcover, 2024