Compulsive Viewing

What a treat to stumble upon the films of Guy Bourdin - an artist immortalized in stills brought to life. For me, viewing stills, whether concious or not, is an active experience. It’s hard to not project my own ideas about the the moments before and after, crafting the narrative of the fictional and imagining the realities of composition. It requires more work than a film - floating down the current and waiting to see what happens next. Delightfully re-edited in the early 2000s by ShowStudio, it feels obvious to say the Bourdin videos are most striking because they offer more than a snapshot. We see what Bourdin did before the curation - the journey of the un-calculated angles and physical realities. But often the most obvious are the most overlooked.