Guy Bourdin’s borderline morbid images are thought to be the result of the photographer’s childhood, abandoned by his mother at a young age, coupled with a string of relationships with suicidal women, his wife is thought to have committed suicide, one girlfriend hung herself and another attempted with slashed wrists. Nonetheless, Bourdin’s provocative images which portrayed inanimate, lifeless women as dead or bleeding victims were published in French Vogue and served as Charles Jourdan ad campaigns. This is perhaps due to Bourdin’s hyperreal aesthetic and saturated colors that seemingly discredit the image’s believability, such as Bourdin’s 1980 image for Pentax Calendars. Bourdin works are continuously referenced and recreated as seen in Venfield 8′s 2013 homage to Bourdin entitled, Vehicular Bourdin. 

Guy Boudrin for Pentax Calendars, 1980

Vehicular Bourdin by Venfield 8, 2013