A Message for You

A Message for You collects the fashion photographs Guy Bourdin made with the model Nicolle Meyer in the late 1970s, the period widely considered the high point of his career. It stands as one of the fullest records of a single working relationship behind his images.

Steidl published the book in 2013, combining two volumes originally issued as a slipcased set in 2006. Its first half shows Meyer's images for Bourdin's Charles Jourdan shoe campaigns and his French Vogue editorials, including variants and outtakes that had gone largely unseen. Its second half turns from finished pictures to process. Polaroids, contact sheets, sketches, and fragments of poems and notes appear alongside Meyer's own written recollections of working with Bourdin. Together the two parts trace both the printed image and the improvisatory work behind it.

Bourdin spent decades as one of French Vogue's most identifiable photographers. He staged fashion pictures as compressed, unresolved narratives, full of saturated color and dark humor, rather than straightforward garment display. Steidl has published several other monographs from his archive, among them Exhibit A, Polaroids, and Image Maker. Each draws on a different part of the working materials he left behind. A Message for You is distinguished by its focus on a single sustained collaboration with one model.