Deborah Turbeville is THE blueprint of storytelling through fashion photography.
This weekend Huis Marseille invites us into the world of Deborah Turbeville with the exhibition Photocollage – think Siouxsie Sioux meets Sofia Coppola captured through a sepia filter…. Deborah Turbeville is THE blueprint of storytelling through fashion photography.
Breaking through the norms of a male-dominated world – we’re talkin Newton and Bourdin who till that point had been the most celebrated fashion photographers – Turbeville captured the essence of her subjects. Opting for unconventional, mysterious faces, she is known for shooting her models in a dreamlike state, with relaxed poses verging on languidness and looking borderline sinister– basically she invented the female gaze.
Turbeville’s creative signature came to life in her studio during her editing process. “I destroy the image after I have made it” she said, experimenting with her prints, from ripping them to scratching and even burning them – we love feminine destruction. This process resulted in a new materiality of the image; it gave her work a sense of decay, creating fragments of a long gone dream and feeding us the perfect plate of melancholy and nostalgia – we told you, think Sofia Coppola.
The exhibition includes not only her original prints but also her collages. Styled as a sort of storyboard, her collages consist of her own photographs blended with little notes pinned on brown paper. The feeling when observing their details is that of a movie script with an open ending. And of course, the collection also includes Bathhouse. Trust us you know it, Turbeville’s best-known shoot that made the history of photography.
On show till the 16th of June, it’s time to get lost in Turbeville’s immaginative labyrinth <3
Words by Agata Villa
Images courtesy of Huis Marseille
