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A photograph taken by Bourdin for the 1975 Charles Jourdan shoes advertising campaign. — Courtesy of The Guy Bourdin Estate/Art+Commerce Anthology

One of Guy Bourdin’s photographs for the January 1970 issue of French Vogue. — Courtesy of The Guy Bourdin Estate/Art+Commerce Anthology

Some 20 years ago, a French fashion photographer brought several European models to China and had them pose at the Temple of Heaven and on the Great Wall in Beijing, in Suzhou’s Gardens and along Wuxi’s ancient narrow streets.
The contrast between the sensual and exotic looking women from Europe and the mysterious, traditional China that was in the background was extremely striking and has proved to be timeless. The photographs appeared in French Vogue magazine and the idea has been copied again and again by other photographers.
Now the ground-breaking pictures have returned home to where they were born to commemorate the work of the late avant-garde photographer — Guy Bourdin (1928-91).
Bourdin’s works have been on display in the National Art Museum in Beijing and now they’re coming to the Shanghai Art Museum. The exhibition is also part of “The Year of France in China” celebrations.
Bourdin, along with Helmut Newton, is considered to be one of the most revolutionary fashion photographers of the second half of the 20th century.
His images of faceless models, worked into beautifully composed minimalist compositions, look as startling today as they did decades ago, when they first appeared in top fashion magazines.
For example, two semi-nude women, leaning over a sink full of shoes, help each other on with bikinis, or a woman in a skin-tight bathing suit is draped over a table, her back towards the viewer, staring at herself in a mirror.
Some critics put down his works for being too sexual, violent or even macabre.
However, others say his imagery made such a huge impact on both commercial and fine art photography that it continues to resonate today.
“I don’t see something sexual, pedophile or violent in my father’s work,” says Samuel Bourdin, who has come to Shanghai to unveil the exhibition. “I only see desire and seduction in these photos and they’re different things.
“My father studied drawing and painting. Being a painter changes everything. He came from a different background. That makes him different as a photographer. It’s a whole  different composition.”
The large display of Bourdin’s work has only been made possible through the hard work and dedication reassembly of his son Samuel. It took him almost seven years of litigation to force some of his father’s “women” to return the old photographs.
“Once I felt rather depressed about it all,” Samuel admits. “My father was not a financially responsible man. He wanted his work to be perfect so he always did it regardless of expense. Actually he was in debt when he was dying.”
The exhibition includes modern prints, black and white 1950s vintage prints, Polaroids, cinefilms, a landscape slide show and the results of informal experiments. The modern prints are a selection mainly from 1970s and early 1980s and show off their
timeless qualities. The exhibition reveals the wide spectrum of Bourdin’s artistic development.
The Polaroids series are photographs he took while travelling for his fashion assignments or on personal trips. He used the Polaroid camera to record his vision of the world. Visitors can also see some original footage that Bourdin shot on 8mm and 16mm film during 1971 and 1975.
Born in 1928, Bourdin showed precocious artistic talent and fierce ambition in his youth in post-war Paris. He presented himself to Man Ray in the early 1950s and was then spotted by French Vogue, where he went on to create some of the most sensational editorial images seen in more than a generation.
His advertisements for Charles Jourdan shoes and Bloomingdales in the mid- 1970s were the high point of his career and landmarks in the field of advertising. Throughout his life, Bourdin worked at a relentless pace and some of his most remarkable images recall the surrealist films of Luis Bunuel or David Lynch.
Bourdin strengthened his stark images with an eye for the absurd and the humorous despite the often morbid nature of his photographic narratives such as the depiction of models lying lifeless on beds, or even chalk outlines positioned near the wheels of a limousine. His palette is filled with glaring, raw, clashing, saturated colors.
Unfortunately, Bourdin was not a natural self-promoter, unlike, say Helmut Newton. Bourdin thought little of his “gift to posterity.” He did not collect his works or make any attempt to preserve them.
As a result, Bourdin’s influence on subsequent generations of photographers has been somewhat underestimated. Although he worked for French Vogue for 30 years not  many collections of his works were published.
It is said that Bourdin himself wanted his work  destroyed after his death which came in 1991. The fact that he had not collected it all together actually saved it from destruction. Samuel says it is not true that his father objected to having a book of his photos published. “He was working on a photo book the year he died,” he says.
As for Samuel, he had a love-and-hate relationship with his father. He hadn’t really admired or paid attention to his father’s works before he died.
But afterwards he gave up his own work — he was a painter based in New York — and began to collect and organize his father’s photos. He also worked at publishing books about his father’s photographic creations and assisted in the making of a documentary about his father’s life.
But, eventually, he says he will resume a career of his own. It may sound very impulsive but he wants to move to Shanghai and send his fiveyear- old daughter to a local primary school so she can learn Chinese.
“This city is a happening place. Anything can happen,” he says with a laugh.

Date: June 4-19, 9am-5pm
Venue: Shanghai Art Museum, 325 Nanjing Rd W.
Admission: 20 yuan
Tel: 6327-2829