Guy Bourdin for Charles Jourdan
Guy Bourdin’s 30 year collaboration with Vogue France began in 1955, where he was hired by editor and chief Edmonde Charles-Roux. In one of his first photos for the magazine, a model daintily holds the tips of her white chapeau, staring sweetly at the lens. Above her hangs five severed calf’s heads, their lifeless tongues extended, as curved hooks penetrate the tops of their heads. It is an arresting image, and it would not be Bourdin’s last. Before running the image, Charles-Roux instructed the art director to crop out the decapitations, leaving only the model’s softly elegant gaze. Perhaps 1955 was too early for such explicit visualizations of sex and death.
