Photocollage

American photographer Deborah Turbeville (1934–2013) was a pioneering figure: a woman working in a male-dominated era. Her unique visual signature has been recognizable since her emergence as a major talent in the 1970s with her work featuring in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Nova and The New York Times and for fashion labels including Comme des Garçons, Guy Laroche and Charles Jordan.

This publication focuses on the area of Turbeville’s practice where her genius as an artist can be found: photocollage. In contrast to her contemporaries, Turbeville would deliberately be playful with her images – xeroxing, cutting, scraping and pinning prints together, writing words in the margins and creating narrative sequences. Her work is located far from single, glossy images. It inhabits a liminal zone between art and commerce.