In September 1978, the Cultural Section of Cologne-based Photokina, the world's biggest trade fair for the photographic and imaging industries, refused to feature a few images by Guy Bourdin, deeming them “in bad taste”.
At the time Bourdin had already been collaborating with Vogue for roughly twenty years, publishing in the famous magazine his best fashion photographs.
Up to then he had never faced any censorship nor had been criticised for being obscene, in bad taste or simply considered unworthy of being included in a fair or exhibition.
Among the images taken by "le roi du chiffon", as Bourdin was known, and excluded from that final selection there was a picture of a naked woman’s torso on which a waffle ice cream cone had been squashed, giving the optical illusion that part of the skin of the woman's body had been ripped or removed (the image was taken with a Yashica camera and published in a 1977 issue of Vogue); a photograph from a fashion photo shoot portraying six men in suits looking at a woman in a silky dressing gown with her back to the camera (Vogue, 1977 - sorry the only version I have is in a double spread, so the quality is not great); an image taken in a studio showing five little girls, made up as grown up women and tucked up in bed, while above their heads hung a sign reading “Occupancy by more than 2 persons is dangerous and unlawful – Commissioner Department of Buildings, City of New York” (Vogue, 1978) and a picture of four naked women’s bodies with a strategically placed anthurium flower (Vogue, 1977), the spadixes of the flowers looking like erected penises, evoking in this way a strange hermaphroditism (the anthurium is also an hermaphrodite flower containing male and female flowers).
Given the banality of the rest of the material admitted in that particular edition of the Photokina Cultural Section, many critics complained about excluding some of the pictures by Bourdin, considering also that other images such as two fashion shots taken in the Cinecittà studios and showing two slightly satanic women running away from what looked like a possessed house (both published in Vogue in 1975), one image taken in 1976 for a beauty photo shoot that showed a woman in her panties throwing some stuff against a man in a bathroom and one photograph that featured a sort of female St Sebastian with blood pouring out of her nipples (Vogue, 1977) - were all selected.
Things have changed quite a bit since then and there is currently a sort of endless competition in getting the most controversial picture published nowadays, not only in fashion magazines, but in any kind of magazine, after all, attracting new readers in the troubled financial times we are living in is of vital importance to survive in the publishing business.
A few exhibitions throughout 2009 - at the Milan-based Galleria Carla Sozzani and at the The Wapping Project in London's East End - allowed visitors to view some of the finest work by prolific Bourdin through his unseen images, while an exhibition in Paris department store Bon Marché titled Guy Bourdin, Ses Films, recently showcased never-before-seen short films, produced between the 60s and the 80s.
The more I look at the images originally excluded from the Photokina selection, the more I think that Bourdin managed in his work to capture social changes, sexual freedom, desire, beauty, death and the excesses of consumerism and capitalism, much better than many other contemporary photographers.
A good and powerful photograph must provoke some kind of reaction in the viewers, taking them to a sort of visionary world in which everything is possible - even witnessing a sort of surreal erotic relationship between a female St. Sebastian and a worshipper clad in a luxurious clothes.
There is enough surrealism in the pages of many magazines out there today, but the message behind some photo shoots - even those ones taken by the most famous contemporary photographers and featured in the pages of Italian Vogue - often leave the viewer cold, showing incredibly beautiful women empowered by their striking clothes, but not stirring any emotions.
When properly taken, beautiful, awful, disturbing or controversial images should instead have the power to stir deep emotions in the viewers, more than words. Maybe we should remember that more often.
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