"I'm just fed up with all the recycled cliches and the sensationalism," says Samuel Bourdin, son of the celebrated French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, over the phone from Paris. "The press tries to make my father out to be some kind of depraved monster, but that's just not accurate."
Samuel's complaint is understandable: the undertones of sadomasochism that run through his father's work make it an easy target for scandalization and accusations of misogyny.
Bourdin (1928-91) is often compared to Helmut Newton: both liked to portray -- and subvert -- sexually charged scenarios. But while Newton has become a household name, Bourdin has remained relatively obscure, mostly due to the fact that it wasn't until some 10 years after his death, in 2001, that a book of his photos was published 2001. It took that long for Samuel to wrest the bulk of his father's jumbled archive of photographs -- as well as Polaroids, movies, notes and drawings -- from the clutches of his former mistress.