SHOCK TREATEMENT

Blockchain technology is set to bring the work of legendary French photographer Guy Bourdin back to life

- JARED PAUL STERN

While legendary French photographer Guy Bourdin is best known for his take on surrealism, "his influences were very diverse," as his son Samuel Bourdin told Interview magazine. "From pop culture to high art, American comic books from the '50s and '60s, hyperrealist painters, classic filmmakers like Erich von Stroheim, horror movies, Pre-Raphaelite painters, classical music, James Brown." His attitude towards life, Samuel noted, is best summed up in his dictum, "Better to live five minutes of happiness rather than an entire life in a conventional way." And better to shock than appease.

Born in France in 1928, Bourdin, who died in 1991, has had work exhibited in and collected by some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Modern in London, The Jeu de Paume, The Getty Museum, and The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. His career spanned more than 40 years, and he worked with all the major fashion magazines as well as the likes of Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale's, among others, creating lush, risqué images that were unlike anything else.