Photo genius, eroticism, cowboys… Weekend replays

THE MORNING LIST

This Saturday, two myths, the fashion photographer who invented “porn chic” and the erotic film that desalinated French cinema. And two fashion trips Back to the futureamong the Texan cowboys of Fort Worth, in the United States, and in the heart of the terrible archipelago once denounced by Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet gulag of sinister memory.

Guy Bourdin, lunar and enigmatic genius

The beautiful and rich portrait that Sean Brandt devotes to the one whose assistant he was, When the Sky Fell Down. The Myth of Guy Bourdin, is the tightened version of a ninety-minute film on which the director has been working for many years and whose theatrical release is not yet specified.

The Australian returns to the mythical figure of the great French photographer to whom, spontaneously, with a “nose” that was well worth his eye, Edmonde Charles-Roux, then patroness of the vogue French, immediately trusted and made famous. Many relatives, models, fashion designers, photographers testify and confirm the lunar genius of Guy Bourdin, who invented a style of fashion photography. “that the little masters of chic porn have ceased to plunder, minus the talent”wrote Laurence Benaïm in The world of December 15, 2001.

Highly sexualized, fetishistic, sadomasochistic, this universe as seductive as it is disturbing – coming from“another planet”, said Karl Lagerfeld – is perfectly analyzed by the speakers. Remains the mystery of a secret man and “haunted by his own images and his imagination”according to Agnès Varda, also a photographer in her early days. Renaud Machart

“Guy Bourdin, image creator”, documentary by Sean Brandt (Australia-France, 2021, 53 min). Available on Arte.tv until October 28.

In Texas, a return to the mythical past of cowboys

For a European tourist, there are multiple reasons to go for a trip to Texas. Whether it’s listening to great music in Austin, exploring museums in Dallas, visiting the Fort Alamo in San Antonio or the NASA Space Center in Houston, to name the most obvious. For her first visit, journalist Alexandra Alévêque, presenter of the program “Strange towns for a meeting”, chose Fort Worth. Close to Dallas, but very different, the fifth largest city in Texas (just under 900,000 inhabitants) plays the card of a mythical past: that of the cowboys and their way of life.

For two weeks, lodged on the ranch of a pure Texas family (Stetson on her head, cowboy boots on her feet), she goes “living in the middle of a western”. In addition to raising horses and bulls for the popular rodeo competitions, the host family introduces its visitor to the joys of life in Fort Worth.

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