Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage
Comme des Garçons, Escalier dans Passage Vivienne, Paris, from the series ‘Comme des Garçons’, Passage Vivienne, Paris, 1980 © Deborah Turbeville / MUUS Collection
Photo London is pleased to highlight the timeless, evocative and hauntingly beautiful photography of Deborah Turbeville, currently on display at The Photographers’ Gallery until 23 February 2025. Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage, published by Thames & Hudson, is the retrospective monograph of a truly innovative image maker whose female gaze transformed fashion photography.
American photographer Deborah Turbeville’s unique visual signature has been recognizable since her emergence as a major talent in the 1970s. Her work defies classification. Her images are evocative, difficult to date at first glance, and seem dreamlike to our 21st-century eyes.
Asser Levy Bathhouse, from the series ‘Bathhouse’, New York, 1975 © Deborah Turbeville / MUUS Collection
Turbeville stands apart from her male contemporaries, whose hardedged, highly sexualized photographs of women now seem to be of their time in comparison with Turbeville’s very different representation of beauty. This book focuses on the area of Turbeville’s practice where her genius as an artist can be found: photocollage. In contrast to her contemporaries in fashion photography, she was deliberately playful with her images: xeroxing, cutting, scraping and pinning prints together, writing 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, the work shown spans commercial and personal projects, with many images published for the first time. With texts by Vince Aletti, Anna Tellgren and Felix Hoffmann, this book brings into the spotlight 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. Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage will be an essential publication with modern relevance for all with a passion for fashion photography.
Louisa San Miguel, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, January 1991 © Deborah Turbeville / MUUS Collection
Nathalie Herschdorfer is Director of Photo Elysee-Museum of Photography in Lausanne. Her previous books include Coming into Fashion, Afterwards: Contemporary Photography Confronting the Past and Body: The Photography Book.
Deborah Turbeville (1934–2013) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her fashion photography featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Nova and The New York Times and for fashion labels including Commes des Garcons, Guy Laroche and Charles Jordan. Her archive is held by The MUUS Collection.
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage
Nathalie Herschdorfer
With further texts by Vince Aletti, Felix Hoffman, Carla Sozzani, Anna Tellgren
Thames & Hudson, 12 October 2023
Hardback, 240 pages, 188 ills.
30 x 25.5 cm
RRP £55