Guy Bourdin casts a long shadow over the world of photography. Hundreds if not thousands of photographers are heavily influenced by his work. They emulate him or try to copy him. But nobody succeeds. In all their work something is amiss. They may reproduce his lighting, the poses and his iconography. But if you look at their work it always looks devoid of life, somehow stilted and dull. Why is that so?
Guy may have been a photographer. What people forget is that above all he was an artist. He may have developed his very own photographic techniques and his unique style. They became his alphabet. But what he wrote composes his work not his alphabet.
All those who tried to step into his shoes have failed miserably. They may have learned Guy Bourdin’s calligraphy. But what they are writing does not make much sense. You cannot cut out musical notes, throw them into a washing machine, spin them around and hope to extract Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Freedom’.

When Marcel Duchamp flung his Urinal into the lake of art in 1917 he produced a tsunami that has sodden all art ever since. The waves that he produced are still rolling today. And the background noise of this event will be detectable for as long art will exist.
Guy Bourdin was born eleven years after this Big Bang and very close to its epicentre indeed. He soaked up its energy by osmosis. He was befriended by Man Ray as a young man and thus possessed intimate knowledge of Dada and Surrealism, what they mean in art and how they apply to life. Without understanding these seminal art movements one cannot understand Guy’s work let alone try to reproduce it..