First Look at the Guy Bourdin Exhibition at Armani/Silos
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MILAN — The work of the late maverick French photographer Guy Bourdin will take center stage in the new exhibition bowing at Armani/Silos during Milan Fashion Week.
Opening Friday and running through Aug. 31, the show was curated by Giorgio Armani with the Guy Bourdin estate, selecting around 100 images, between memorable shots and lesser-known ones realized by the protégé of Man Ray.
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Titled “Guy Bourdin: Storyteller,” the exhibit intends to highlight the compositional and narrative force of his photography, delving beyond the provocation that has always been associated with his work. In the vein of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and artist Edward Hopper, whom he admired, Bourdin, who died in 1991, condensed rich narratives — usually crime or noir — into his striking photographs.
Although Bourdin’s style and his signature use of saturated colors differ from Armani’s own iconography, the designer highlighted freedom of expression and a passion for cinema as shared values.
“This exhibition is further confirmation of my intention to make Armani/Silos a center of contemporary photography culture, embracing everything related to the Armani world as well as things that couldn’t be further from it,” Armani said.
“At first glance, Guy Bourdin is not an artist with whom I have a lot in common: his language is clear-cut, graphic and impactful. A sense of provocation is immediately evident in his work but what strikes me the most — and what I wanted to focus on — is instead his creative freedom, his narrative skill and his great love of cinema. Bourdin did not follow the crowd and he did not compromise and I identify with that. I don’t believe that there is any other way to make a mark on the collective imagination,” the designer added.
Along with the color images — to be explored in an entire room of reds, greens and pinks – 21 black-and-white photographs will be included in the exhibition. A hall featuring a selection of advertising campaigns will further highlight the timeless quality and modernity of Bourdin’s work, as well as his skills as a surreal narrator of mysterious dramas, which broke moral conventions and paid little heed to standards of beauty.
Born in Paris in 1928, Bourdin began his career as a painter and became a self-taught photographer in the early ’50s. He immediately developed a unique style, steeped in Surrealist references and atmospheres as a result of his longstanding friendship with Man Ray, whom he met in 1951.
Discovered by Vogue Paris, he started a collaboration with the magazine, which spawned photo shoots and advertising campaigns. Over time, he worked for clients such as Charles Jourdan, Calvin Klein, Bloomingdale’s and Pentax, but always stayed true to his belief that product was secondary to the image, keeping the focus on composition, color, light and shadow in his work.
In particular, his 15 year ad-making collaboration with Charles Jourdan produced some of his most renowned photographs, including the “Walking Legs” series created long before Photoshop and showing elegant disembodied legs strolling along various streets, train platforms, hotel rooms and gardens across Britain.
Armani has long expressed his interest and passion for photography and is not new to staging exhibitions dedicated to the medium during fashion week. Last year, coinciding with Milan Men’s Fashion Week, the designer unveiled a show with Magnum Photos that highlighted 10 international names.
Previous photography exhibitions staged at Armani/Silos included those dedicated to Charles Fréger, Peter Lindbergh, Larry Fink and Sarah Moon as well as artist Paolo Ventura and a collective display of images by the likes of Aldo Fallai, Kurt and Weston Markus, Tom Munro, David Sims and Richard Phibbs.
In 2019, the location hosted its first architecture showcase with the “The Challenge — Tadao Ando” exhibit. This was later flanked by a display of the projects of architecture students at the Politecnico di Milano University, which in 2007 bestowed on Armani an honorary degree in industrial design.
Inaugurated in 2015, Armani/Silos last year served as a presentation space to display pieces of the designer’s home line, Armani Casa, during Milan’s international furniture and design trade show Salone del Mobile. It was the location for the Giorgio Armani coed fall 2019 fashion show in February 2019, marking a first at the venue for the designer, who for years showed at his Teatro across the street.
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