Deborah Turbeville: photocollage

Abstract

"Timeless, evocative and hauntingly beautiful, Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage presents the work of a truly innovative image maker whose female gaze transformed fashion photography. American photographer Deborah Turbeville (1934–2013) was a pioneering figure: a woman working in a male-dominated era. Her unique visual signature has been recognizable since her emergence as a major talent in the 1970s with her work featuring in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Nova and The New York Times and for fashion labels including Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche and Charles Jordan. This publication focuses on the area of Turbeville’s practice where her genius as an artist can be found: photocollage. In contrast to her contemporaries, Turbeville would deliberately be playful with her images – xeroxing, cutting, scraping and pinning prints together, writing words in the margins and creating narrative sequences. Her work is located far from single, glossy images. It inhabits a liminal zone between art and commerce. Built upon extensive research in the Deborah Turbeville archive by Nathalie Herschdorfer in collaboration with MUUS Collection, the work shown spans commercial and personal projects, with many images being published for the first time. Supported by texts by Vince Aletti, Felix Hoffmann and Anna Tellgren, and featuring an interview with Carla Sozzani, whose commissions for Vogue Italia played a key role in nurturing Turbeville’s career, this book brings into view the ways in which Turbeville redefined fashion photography, moving away from the sexual provocation and stereotypes assigned by male photographers to an idea of femininity on her terms."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Magic realism : the fictions of Deborah Turbeville, from the darkroom to photocollage / Nathalie Herschdorfer -- The beginnings -- Deborah Turbeville's haunted neoclassicism / Vince Aletti -- Revelations -- The pictorial impulse of Deborah Turbeville / Anna Tellgren -- Journeys -- Time and timelessness : on the concept of reproduction in the work of Deborah Turbeville / Felix Hoffmann -- Other homes -- Carla Sozzani on Deborah Turbeville / interview by Nathalie Herschdorfer -- Fictions -- Afterword / Michael W. Sonnenfeldt and Richard Grosbard -- Illustrated chronology / Christina Cacouris.