Deborah Tuberville – Photocollage

Review by Beatta M Tuominen •

I was provided this book to review because I’m typically interested in editorial-style portraits, fashion photography, and narratives told through the inclusion of environments and layers. You know the cliché saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”—well, that’s exactly what I did with Nathalie Herschdorfer’s Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage. I didn’t see how this book related to fashion photography, and the dust jacket wasn’t inviting me in. Once I finally opened it, however, I was quickly pulled in by Herschdorfer’s writing on Turbeville, realizing that this book explores Turbeville as an artist and her personal projects, as well as her impact on the fashion photography world.

Deborah Turbeville started out as a model in New York City. Subsequently coming from editorial positions at Mademoiselle and Harper’s Bazaar, she had a sound understanding of the fashion world. Championed by Vogue’s creative director Alexander Liberman, she began taking photographs and created a fictional magazine, Maquillage, in 1975. She released a thousand copies at Rizzoli Gallery’s exhibition “Fashion as Fantasy,” jump-starting her photographic career.

Turbeville’s style was completely unique compared to her male contemporaries, whose highly sexualized photographs of strong women contrasted sharply with Turbeville’s evocative, intimate, soft, and somber mood. This earned the interest of women editors especially—at Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue Italia—as well as fashion houses such as Calvin Klein, Valentino, and Romeo Gigli.

Reading and moving through the beautiful layouts of this book, I became immersed in Turbeville’s artistic world. Her collages and projects seem hauntingly 19th century, reminding me more of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work or Edgar Degas’s drawings than late 20th-century fashion photography. Yet when I reached the timeline at the end of the book, I could see from the color fashion images her clear impact on the editorial style of contemporary magazines.

After reading this book, it’s clear to me that her personal projects and artistic practice helped her develop a distinctive style, which in turn elevated her work as an editorial photographer. Contemporary photographer Elinor Carucci taught in her class Editorial Photography that personal passion projects are just the ticket to landing work with magazines. Young and upcoming fashion photographer Benjo Arwas keeps a journal where he makes collages just as Turbeville did. What this book taught me is that unique voices are what editors are looking for, and photographers of any type should keep developing their creativity and artistic practices.

Herschdorfer’s Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage is not a book only for those interested in portraits or fashion, but also for anyone interested in developing their own style, working with collages, getting a glimpse of Versailles, St. Petersburg, Mexico, or Guatemala—where Turbeville photographed—or simply learning that prejudice based on outward appearance robs us of deeper understanding and beauty from unexpected sources.

Beatta M Tuominen is a Finnish-born, Southern California-based visual artist who explores the nuances of our many connections.

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Deborah Tuberville: Photocollage, Nathalie Herschdorfer (editor)

Photographer: Deborah Tuberville (American fashion photographer, 1932 – 2013) born in Massachusetts, resided mainly in New York City, NY)

Texts: Nathalie Herschdorfer (Curator, Director Photo Elysee), Vince Aletti (critic and curator in New York), Felix Hoffman (art historian and cultural theorist), Carla Sozzani (gallerist, publisher and former editor), Anna Tellgren (curator of photography at Moderna Museet, Stockholm)

Language: English

Consultant Picture Editor: Richard Grosbard

Editorial and Archival Management: Amanda Smith

Hardbound, with illustrated jacket, 240 pages; 12.2 x 10.4 inches; 188 color illustrations; Illustrated Chronology by Christina Cacouris, Notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgements, printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co. Ltd; ISBN 978-0-500-02621-2

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