His work with French Vogue, coupled with his intuitive, ground-breaking advertising campaigns for Charles Jourdan shoes, changed the nature of fashion photography. Emphasis on the product was transferred onto the image, and in doing so, a new narrative was established, independent of the product itself.

Bourdin’s subsequent success afforded him additional artistic licence where lurid, eccentric and overtly sexual images explored the controversial themes of domination, violence and death, provoking accusations of misogyny and a morbid pre-occupation with mortality.

Rarely seen images of his work are currently on show at Michael Hoppen Gallery, including a selection from his series for the 1980 Pentax Calendar, which serve as a fitting tribute to an artist who died 21 years ago in relative obscurity, and is considered to be one of the most influential fashion photographers of the Twentieth Century.

Guy Bourdin is at the Michael Hoppen Gallery until 10th March 2012

michaelhoppengallery.com

Words by Dawn Daniels

Held together by no specific theme, his images are poetic plays on light and space. Taking images of everyday experiences, there’s an anonymity to his photographs that hints at stories the viewer can only imagine. Whether it’s a girl teetering over the precipice of New York or an alien smoke puff hanging above a kitchen sink, Barber’s camera intimately and lovingly records moments in life.

Tim Barber: Untitled Photographs exhibition and book signing is tonight at 7pm at Mother, Biscuit Building, 10 Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DD

RSVP Richard@webberrepresents.com

tim-barber.com

motherlondon.com

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

In the Seventies, Burdett was a post-boy at Island Records when he came across a dumped tape intriguingly labelled, “Nick Drake, Cello Song. With love.” It was 20 years before he actually listened to it, discovering an earthy version of Drake’s famed song and another few years passed before he decided what to do with his discovery.

Inspiredly, instead of releasing it into the online ether, Burdett  travelled the length and breadth of Britian, stopping some famous people and some not on streets, hills and work places to offer them a chance to hear the song. Each time, he took a portrait of the listener.

The results are now on display at the Idea Generation gallery in East London. The Strange Face Project, takes it’s name from the first line of Cello Song and also refers to the expressions Burdett observed of his listeners and a fitting ode to one of music’s lost talents.

The Strange Face Project is at the Idea Generation gallery until Sunday, February 12.

ideageneration.co.uk

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

Last Wednesday his Net-A-Porter range, Karl, sparked a global rush for cutaway leather gloves and stiff necked white collars. And thanks to some innovative use of augmented reality pop-up windows, shopping online has never felt so communal. With windows in New York, Paris, Sydney, Berlin and of course Net-A-Porter’s hometown London, this was a truly Twenty-first century collaboration.

While many of the key items sold out in a flash, there are still many covetable pieces, sleeveless biker vests and gladiator sandals for two, that are just a few clicks away from landing on your doormat. If you haven’t already, it’s time to get online with Karl.

net-a-porter.com/Karl

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

At the opening party for their installation Numéros Privés, a sea of Chanel clad beauties, including Diane Kruger and Alexa Chung,  were transported through ten magical spaces inspired by the brand’s iconic codes. The materials, figures, symbols, colours and coveted objects that make Chanel so recognisable were transformed and reinterpreted.

From a recreation of Coco Chanel’s Paris apartment to a room with quilted leather walls in tribute to the 2.55 bag, Numéros Privés is a magical microcosm of Chanel’s world.

If you haven’t already received your invitation then it’s time to beg, borrow or steal your way into their breathtaking installation.

Numéros Privés by Chanel is at the Wynn Las Vegas until January 28th

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, Coddington collaborated with her then husband on a series of experimental fashion photographs. The little seen results are now part of an exhibition of Christie’s work at London’s Eight Club.

From hauntingly lit scenes of cinematic glamour to striking and powerful monochrome portraits it’s an opportunity to gaze at the beauty of one of fashion’s most important and enigmatic visionaries.

Willie Christie’s Limited Edition Collection is on show at the Eight Club, London EC3 until 24th February.

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

From tomorrow he’s holding a pop up registry office in the Royal Festival Hall where he’ll commemorate the quarter of a million lives that are born and die in the space of 12 hours around the world.

Members of the public can add themselves and their loved ones to the work. Each circle will mark the ebb and flow of life, showing people as more than just a number.

Sam Winston: Birthday will be at the Royal Festival Hall 27 January 2012, 10:00am – 29 January 2012, 23:00pm. Watch a film about the event here

samwinston.com

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

A larger than life character, with her striking ageless style and ever present alsation pug Otis, Claire’s passing last week after a prolonged illness is a loss to all who prize independence and personality and to those resisting the creeping tide of a homogeneous culture.

There was room for everyone in her shop, all were free to browse or buy, and on her shelves young talent jostled happily alongside huge names. Twin can only thank and pay our respects to a woman who strove to deliver the best and allow the young to flourish.

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

Having recently published a limited edition artist book, Drinking Air, as well as a new video work, In Search of Lightening, Twin spoke to the artist about her art…

Drinking Air looks back at six years of your work – while selecting the images for the book did you observe how your work has developed?

The book compiles a selection of works from 2004 – 2010, punctuated with fragments of narrative short texts. The feeling of the whole project (a small edition of artist books) was to have a sense of the process, so it almost functions like something between a sketchbook and book, bringing together fragments of writing, reference images, works in progress and final works.

My work as a whole has continually become more fluid I think. The book helped me think about the relationship between my writing and the visual works, and the way my new film work has incorporated the two into one piece. The book is also sort of inadvertently pre-empting the end of a relationship that spans that period and before. Sometimes you put into writing and images things that you don’t realize are happening in your life.

How does your painting relate to your video work?

Painting into and onto photographs is a very similar process in some ways to collaging different images together or editing/ montaging different filmed shots together and working with voiceover and sound with that footage. All the processes are adding something to the image, while in some ways also obscuring the image. Both the painted photographs and the film work is creating a fictional space, which opens up relationships to myth and narrative

Your film In Search of Lightning is beautifully melancholic – did the images inspire the words or vice versa?

I have actually worked on the film for a long time, but was not sure at first what I was making. I’ve been filming some of the locations without a set piece in mind for over a year ago. Then in the summer of 2010 I was spending a lot of time in the old, forgotten greenhouse attached to the palace in the city I grew up in. I just sat in that space reading and writing, trying to figure out the changes in my life. I wrote the voiceover during the most beautiful thunderstorm and then knew what the film would be. I finished the last filming this summer and then edited it down from hours of footage to just a few minutes.

Where was the film shot?

It is shot in several locations (different swamps, caves and greenhouses) within a few hours radius of my parent’s house in southern Germany in the Rhine Valley.

You seem drawn to nature and the classical body…

I suppose a lot of my work looks at a sense of a primordial space of home – whether in the landscapes of swamps and caves or within the bodies of mother and lover. I am interested in bodies and flesh, in skin and our fragility as well as our strength.

In the film there is a distinct absence of living bodies, the only presence the narrator’s voice describing the physical effects of loss and grief. The statues surrounding her become loaded with narrative in relationship to her words. The discoloured marble statue at the end begins to look like living bruised flesh

As an artist, what drives you to keep creating?

The need to talk about experiences, whether mine or others’, and create a space in which these can be relived, restaged – not within a literal re-enactment, but rather within another space of metaphor and fiction.

The works of other artists, writers and filmmakers makes me want to keep making work and leads me to new ideas. Visiting each other’s studios and spending time with friends talking about life and work, which are never really separate, makes me continue to work. But most of the work probably comes from the things I can’t really even talk about, which is why I guess they become images, films, and stories.

estherteichmann.com

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

Shot in monochrome 35mm film in a cramped photo booth, the video for their song The Last Goodbye is an exploration of Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart’s ten year working relationship. Mosshart’s luminous beauty, often hidden behind huge hair and glasses is fully exposed, while her voice tilts beautifully at melancholy notes.

While The Kills rarely enjoy the video making premise, the simplicity of Morton’s premise allows Mosshart and Hince’s friendship to be the star.

Watch the video here

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard