Works
Biography
View works. Deborah Turbeville, Italian Vogue, from series "Women of the Steam Bath," New York, NY, May 1984
Italian Vogue, from series "Women of the Steam Bath," New York, NY, May 1984
View works
Deborah Turbeville, an American artist and photographer, transformed the world of fashion photography through her groundbreaking, dreamlike, and melancholic imagery. Born in Stoneham Massachusetts in 1932, Turbeville moved to New York following her schooling with an intent to work in the theater, but was instead discovered by the American fashion designer Claire McCardell, who hired Turbeville as an assistant and house model. While working for McCardell, she met Diana Vreeland, then the famed editor of Harper's Bazaar; their introduction eventually led to Turbeville being offered a job as an editor at the magazine. 
 
Disinterested in the editorial work she was doing at Harper's Bazaar and later at Mademoiselle, she purchased a Pentax camera in the 1960s and began experimenting with photography, ultimately enrolling in a workshop taught by photographer Richard Avedon and art director Marvin Israel in 1966. Following their tutelage, she began her career in photography, primarily working for fashion magazines like Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Mirabella, though she didn't consider herself a fashion photographer. 
 
Her most controversial photograph, Bath House, New York City, 1975, part of a swimsuit photoshoot for Vogue Magazine, featured five models, slouching and stretching in an abandoned bathhouse. The nature of the picture, so unlike the staid fashion imagery of the time, prompted a public outcry. Undeterred, Turbeville continued to produce images with an element of decay; she would routinely make efforts to distress her printed photographs, to give them an aged, slightly disintegrated appearance, further amplified by printing with faded colors and sepia tones. She also regularly produced collages of her work, turning her images into physical art objects. 
 
In 1981, Turbeville was commissioned by Jaqueline Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, to photograph the Palace of Versailles, particularly the disused rooms that were off-limits to tourists. The resultant book, Unseen Versailles, won an American Book Award, among other critical praise for its rare look into the palace's decaying grandeur. 
 
In addition to Unseen Versailles, Turbeville published many renowned books of her photography, notably: Studio St. Petersburg, The Voyage of the Virgin Maria Candelaria, and Newport Remembered. She has also had books published posthumously, including Comme des Garçons 1981, a series of photographs she took during the 1980s in collaboration with the fashion house and its designer, Rei Kawakubo. 
 
Turbeville died in 2013, having left an indelible mark on the world of photography; she is often credited with transforming fashion imagery into avant-garde art. Her work is held in major collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. 
Bibliography
View works. Deborah Turbeville, Italian Vogue, from series "Women of the Steam Bath," New York, NY, May 1984
Italian Vogue, from series "Women of the Steam Bath," New York, NY, May 1984
View works
Deborah Turbeville
(b. 1932, Stoneham, MA; d. 2013, New York, NY)

 

 
Selected solo exhibitions
 

2019 Deborah Bell Photographs, New York, NY. Deborah Turbeville: Collages 

2012 Galerie Serge Aboukrat, Deborah Turbeville: Unseen Versailles

2007 Center of Photography, St. Petersburg, Russia 

1999 Kunst Museum, Joenseeu, Finland; Studio St. Petersburg

1997 Hasselblad Museum, Goteborg, Sweden, Studio St. Petersburg also exhibited in St. Petersburg

1993 Museo Contemporaneo, Mexico City 

1986 Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 

1976 Camera Works Gallery, New York 

1976 Sydney Photography Center, Sydney 

 

Selection group exhibition

 

2020 Jeffrey Deitch, Inc., Los Angeles, CA. All of Them Witches. Organized by Dan Nadel and Laurie Simmons

2016 Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Body in the History of Photography

2013 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. Unreal: Conceptual Photographs from the 70s & 80s

1999 Kunst Museum, Wolfsburg, Germany. Addressing the Century

1996 New York Public Library, New York. A History of Women Photographers

1994 Centre National de la Photographie, Paris. Vanites

1991 Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Appearances

1983 La Grande Palais, Paris. Versailles - 19th Century to Present

1980 Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Surrealism

1977 The History of Fashion Photography, produced by Nancy Hall-Duncan, exhibited throughout the  United States and Europe 

1976 Teheran. Women Photographers

1975 Rizzoli Gallery, New York. Fashion as Fantasy

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