Guy Bourdin

Guy Bourdin was born in Paris in 1928 and received his first photographic training whilst performing military service in Senegal in 1948-9. His photographs were first shown in Paris in 1952, the catalogue for which exhibition included an introduction by Man Ray, and he began working for French Vogue in 1954.

Inspired by Man Ray's brand of Surrealism, Bourdin rejected the descriptive roles of photography in favour of an exploration of the medium's capacity for the divergent. Along…