Exhibition dates: 9th October, 2024 – 23rd February, 2025
Curators: Nathalie Herschdorfer, Director of Photo Elysée, and Karen McQuaid, Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery.
Deborah Turbeville (American, b. 1932-2013)
Untitled
Passage Vivienne, Paris, France, November 1980
From the series Comme des Garçons
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
There are some haunting photographs in this posting on the work of American photographer Deborah Turbeville but unfortunately I can make little comment on her work.
Despite trawling through numerous sites looking at her images – there is not much online – and more importantly having not seen the exhibition, I find that I have no real handle on the photographic series.
A couple of photographs from the Passport, Comme des Garçons, Block Island and Unseen Versailles series, plus a few photocollage which investigate the nature of photography and its fragility in this posting doesn’t allow me to understand the full sweep of her artistic work… which is a great pity.
The only way to really understand and feel Turbeville’s work is to visit The Photographers’ Gallery and immerse yourself in the artist’s world. Unfortunately I cannot do that.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to The Photographers’ Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“When I’m making photographs, I think of films”
Deborah Turbeville, 1985
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage – Exhibition Trailer – The Photographers’ Gallery
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage highlights the work of a truly innovative, American fashion photographer, Deborah Turbeville (1932-2013) who transformed fashion imagery into avant-garde art. Her signature dreamlike and melancholic style became recognisable with her earliest works in the 1970s: enigmatic female figures, cloudy skies, wintry nature and abandoned, decaying surroundings. She deliberately distanced herself from the typical glamourous, polished aesthetic that dominated fashion at the time.
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage – Curator’s Interview
An interview on the exhibition Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage with Nathalie Herschdorfer, Exhibition Curator, and Karen McQuaid, Senior Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery.
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Walking down Passage Vivienne (Escalier dans Passage Vivienne)
Paris, France, November 1980
From the series Comme des Garçons
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville’s signature dreamlike and melancholic style became recognisable with her earliest works in the 1970s: enigmatic female figures, cloudy skies, wintry nature and abandoned, decaying surroundings. She deliberately distanced herself from the typical glamourous, polished aesthetic that dominated fashion at the time.
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage presents Turbeville’s trailblazing photographic explorations, from fashion photos to her very personal work. Bringing together unique pieces, the exhibition reveals Turbeville’s highly personal artistic universe, which has been credited with transforming fashion imagery into avant-garde art.
She experimented with the developing process, from the darkroom to the studio table. She ripped, cut and tore her photographs; manipulated, pinned and glued them together to create unique hybrid objects. Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage is a new appreciation of Turbeville’s ground-breaking contribution to the history of photography.
Text from The Photographers’ Gallery website
Unseen Versailles
Jacqueline Onassis commissioned Turbeville to photograph the Palace of Versailles during her tenure as an editor at the American publishing house Doubleday. With help from Onassis she gained access to the labyrinth of hidden chambers and antechambers which were off limits to tourists. She photographed barren rooms, Baroque furniture covered with sheets, broken statues, and curtains thick with dust. The curator of the estate initially blocked the introduction of props, but Onassis eventually gained her permission to bring in models in period costumes. Unseen Versailles won the American Book Award in 1982 and enabled Turbeville to find a readership outside fashion magazines.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation views of the exhibition Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage at The Photographers’ Gallery, London
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (until 23 February 2025), celebrates Turbeville’s trailblazing photographic explorations, from fashion photos to her very personal work. To coincide with the exhibition, we’re looking at some of her photographic series in more detail, starting with the Passport series!
Turbeville’s Passport series of collages, which accompanied a novella she wrote with the same name, demonstrates her very cinematic, narrative approach to photography.
Fixed to wrinkled brown paper with unusually large T-pins, the series heavily features portrait photographs. The gelatin silver prints all have slightly varying hues of black and white; their torn edges overlap, each revealing a different fragment. The torn sections of women’s faces stand out against grainy backgrounds, like a ghostly white sky. Turbeville selected images, largely from her archives, showing repeated shots positioned together, repurposing her work to create new experimental compositions that felt cinematic in style. Alongside the images, fragments of her unpublished novella are cut out and pasted, so that the series can be read narratively as well as visually.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Turbeville considered photography to be more than just a means of pictorial representation. Curious about the materials and nature of photography, she was inescapably interested in its fragility. Her photocollages suggested new possibilities for photography, which had, until then, cleaved very closely to reality. Collage became a form of manual work which allowed her to create three-dimensional objects and a chance to gather up her own images and give them new depth. She embraced the visible imperfections in a handmade, narrative style that gives her work a unique stylistic voice.
Text from The Photographers’ Gallery Instagram page
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Maquillage
1975
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Bathhouse, New York
New York, 1975
From the series Bathhouse
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Jean Muir and Three Unknown Models
1975
© The Estate of Deborah Turbeville
For her second spread in Vogue Magazine, Deborah Turbeville photographed designers with their models and muses in a February 1975 editorial titled “European Fashion: The Movers”. Here, she captured the British doyenne of dressmaking, Jean Muir, with her friends modelling her designs.
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Untitled
Block Island, Rhode Island, 1976
From the series Block Island
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Untitled
Block Island, Rhode Island, 1976
From the series Block Island
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Versailles
Versailles, France, 1980
From the series Unseen Versailles
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
How Deborah Turbeville tore up the rules
Deborah Turbeville is remembered today as a pioneering figure in fashion photography, known for her melancholic, dreamlike imagery that diverged from conventional standards. Born in 1932 in Stoneham, Massachusetts, USA, she initially pursued acting before being discovered by fashion designer Claire McCardell, who employed her as an assistant and model. Through McCardell, Turbeville met Diana Vreeland, then editor of Harper’s Bazaar, which launched her editorial career. However, she soon lost interest in conventional editorial work, turning instead to photography as an outlet for artistic expression and experimentation.
In the 1960s, after buying her first camera, Turbeville began early experimentation in photography. Her creative direction was refined through a workshop with photographer Richard Avedon and art director Marvin Israel. Moving from fashion editing to photography, she worked for magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, though she always insisted she was not a traditional fashion photographer. Rather, she used fashion within her work to tell emotionally charged stories, setting herself apart from the industry’s glamorous norms.
One of her most iconic works is the Bathhouse series for Vogue in 1975, featuring models posed in a dilapidated bathhouse. The images conveyed vulnerability, decay and isolation, starkly contrasting with the glossy fashion photography of the time. Although controversial, the series exemplified Turbeville’s atmospheric aesthetic – soft focus, grainy textures and muted tones. She often distressed her photographs to give them an aged appearance, blurring the lines between fashion photography and fine art.
Turbeville’s work rejected the conventions of fashion industry ideals, choosing instead to explore themes of memory, loss and feminine vulnerability. Her approach stood in contrast to contemporaries like Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, whose images typically celebrated female sensuality. In contrast, Turbeville’s subjects appeared introspective and distant, encouraging viewers to engage with them on a deeper, emotional level.
In 1981, Turbeville was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to photograph the abandoned rooms of the Palace of Versailles, which resulted in the book Unseen Versailles. The images of faded grandeur reflected her fascination with decay and received critical acclaim, winning an American Book Award.
Her body of work extended beyond fashion to other notable publications, including Studio St. Petersburg, The Voyage of the Virgin Maria Candelaria, and Newport Remembered. Throughout her career, she consistently merged fashion with fine art, creating images defined more by atmosphere and emotion than style alone.
Her photocollages show her experimental approach to constructing compositions. Her photographs are just one element among several. She builds up mysterious narratives through overlapping layers of pinned, ripped, cut, creased and taped images, found objects and printed texts. These layers are built up on heavy brown paper – a complete departure from the glossy white pages of fashion magazines. Her Passport series of collages, which accompanied a novella she wrote with the same name, demonstrates her very cinematic, narrative approach to photography.
Turbeville’s influence on future generations of photographers is significant. She opened doors for more experimental, avant-garde approaches to fashion photography, transforming it from a commercial medium into a space for artistic exploration. Her rejection of industry norms allowed her to create a distinctive visual language that continues to inspire photographers and artists today.
Turbeville once remarked that she was more interested in creating “atmosphere and mood” than simply photographing clothes, a sentiment that underpinned her career. By embracing imperfection, decay and the passage of time, she redefined fashion photography as more than a vehicle for selling clothes.
Turbeville’s career represents a turning point in fashion photography. Her dreamlike, melancholic style and innovative approach broke industry conventions, transforming fashion photography into a medium for personal and artistic expression. Her legacy continues to inspire, and her influence remains enduring long after her death in 2013.
Anonymous. “How Deborah Turbeville tore up the rules,” on The Photographers’ Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 16/01/2025
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Page from Passport
c. 1990
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Page from Passport
c. 1990
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Page from Passport
c. 1990
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Page from Passport
c. 1990
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Luisa, Posos, January 1991
1991
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
“Fashion takes itself more seriously than I do. I’m not really a fashion photographer.”
Deborah Turbeville in The New Yorker
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage opens at The Photographers’ Gallery this Autumn, from 9 October 2024 – 23 February 2025. Presenting the work of the truly innovative American photographer, Deborah Turbeville (1932-2013), the exhibition will feature a selection of her personal vintage photocollages and editorial work.
Deborah Turbeville revolutionised the world of fashion photography, transforming it from its commercial clean standard into an art form. Turbeville deliberately distanced herself from the typical glamorous, polished aesthetic that dominated fashion at the time. Her signature dreamlike and melancholic style became recognisable with her earliest works in the 1970s: enigmatic female figures, cloudy skies, wintry nature and abandoned, decaying surroundings.
Turbeville’s work for the fashion industry launched her career, which lasted over four decades. Between 1975 and 2013, her photographs were published in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and New York Times Magazine. She also worked for fashion houses including Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche, Charles Jourdan, Calvin Klein, Emanuel Ungaro and Valentino. At a time when fashion photography was dominated by men, Turbeville chose a path that ran counter to that of her male peers, like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin.
Soft focus and overexposure brought a surreal and dusty tone to her black, white and sepia-toned work. Her models resemble ghostly apparitions as they wander through deserted buildings and landscapes. The exhibition includes her most controversial photograph, Bath House, New York City, 1975, part of a swimsuit photoshoot for Vogue, which featured five models, slouching and stretching in an abandoned bathhouse. The picture was so unlike the traditional fashion imagery of the time it prompted a public outcry.
Turbeville was undeterred and continued to produce images with an element of decay, saying “the idea of disintegration is really the core of my work.”
Other works on show include images from Turbeville’s 1981 American Book Award-winning series Unseen Versailles, and her first photocollage magazine, Maquillage (1975).
Turbeville’s experimentation extended from the darkroom to the studio table as she unpicked the developing process. She ripped, cut and tore her photographs; manipulated, pinned and glued them. Her handmade collages are hybrid objects – as much diaries as book maquettes, sketchbooks as photographic novels – all from a pre-digital age.
Describing her work, she said “I destroy the image after I’ve made it, obliterate it a little so you never have it completely there.”
Turbeville developed a highly personal artistic universe, which has been credited with transforming fashion imagery into avant-garde art. Although she did not achieve the same recognition as her male counterparts in her lifetime. Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage is a new opportunity to consider and celebrate Turbeville’s ground-breaking contribution to the history of photography.
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage is organised by The Photographers’ Gallery, produced by Photo Elysée in collaboration with MUUS Collection. The exhibition is curated by Nathalie Herschdorfer, Director of Photo Elysée, and Karen McQuaid, Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery.
The accompanying catalogue Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage is published by Thames & Hudson and available at The Photographers’ Gallery’s bookshop at £55.
Deborah Turbeville short biography
Deborah Turbeville was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, USA in 1932. She moved to New York with ambitions to study drama when she was 19. Instead she was discovered by the fashion designer Claire McCardell, who hired Turbeville as an assistant and house model. While working for McCardell, she met Diana Vreeland, the famed editor of Harper’s Bazaar. Their introduction led to Turbeville being offered a job as an editor at the magazine.
Disinterested in her editorial work at Harper’s Bazaar and later at Mademoiselle, she began experimenting with photography in the 1960s. She took part in a workshop led by Richard Avedon and art director Marvin Israel in 1966. From there, she began her photographic career, mainly working for magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Mirabella.
In 1981, Turbeville was commissioned by Jaqueline Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, to photograph disused rooms in the Palace of Versailles. The book, Unseen Versailles, won an American Book Award, for its rare look into the Palace’s off-limits decaying grandeur.
Turbeville published many books of her photography, including Studio St. Petersburg, The Voyage of the Virgin Maria Candelaria and Newport Remembered. Posthumous publications include Comme des Garçons 1981, a series of photographs she took during the 1980s in collaboration with the fashion house and its designer, Rei Kawakubo.
Turbeville died in 2013, having left an indelible mark on the world of photography. Her work is collected by major institutions worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Press release from The Photographers’ Gallery
Deborah Turbeville (American, 1932-2013)
Untitled (Metamorphosis of Ella M.)
Paris, France, early 1990s
From the series L’École des Beaux Arts
© Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection
Stephan Lupino (Croatian, b. 1952)
Portrait of Deborah Turbeville
Nd
Gelatin silver print
© Stephan Lupino
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