When I first began to look at several of Deborah Turbeville’s photographs at a time, I felt as if I was transforming into her world, stepping alongside her and she was leading me into a journey. It was a gentle shift of focus, and it had a lingering effect. In my eyes, I see that she embraced what the Japanese refer to as “waba sabi.” In the book Waba-Sabi for Artists, Designer, Poets & Philosophers, the Waba-Sabi state of mind is described as “Acceptance of the inevitable. Waba-sabi is an aesthetic appreciation of the evanescence of life. The luxuriant tree of summer is now only branches under a winter sky. All that remains of a splendid mansion is a crumbled foundation overgrown with weeds and moss. Waba-sabi images force us to contemplate our own mortality, and they evoke an existential loneliness and tender sadness. They also stir a mingled bittersweet comfort, since we know all existence shares the same fate (1).” These are the kind of emotions that her photographs bring to the surface. Turbeville also expressed that she felt anxiety in herself, and that “you can see the future on the women’s faces, in their apprehension.” She also “literally manipulated her negatives, scratching them, tearing them, scattering dust on them and otherwise distressing them- to make the finished images redolent of decay. She employed faded color, black-and-white and sepia tones; prints were often deliberately overexposed, rendering her subjects spectral (2).”

Born into a wealthy family in New England in 1932, Turbeville lived in somewhat isolated manner and was encouraged to be unique. Her family had a summer home in Ogunquit, Maine and she later described it as “very sorry, very sinister, very beautiful.” It was the experience of visiting this summer home, the wind swept coastal areas, and backgrounds that she saw, that later became her inspiration for her photographs.

When Turbeville began her exploration into fashion photography she shocked many people. Her work was counter culture to what had been set up as precedence in the world of fashion. Her pictures weren’t bright, shiny and focused on the model and what she was wearing. Turbeville had a different focus, therefore her photographs were darker, containing moodiness, and she used backgrounds that she felt would convey what she wanted to, which was a whole new realm of fashion photography.  In 1977, Turbeville told the Times “I can’t deny that I design the background. A woman in my pictures doesn’t just sit there. In what kind of a mood would a woman be, wearing whatever? I go into a woman’s private world, where you never go.” In 2009, Women’s Wear Daily wrote that Turbeville was becoming famous for transforming fashion photography into an avant-garde art.” In 2011, Turbeville told The New Yorker “Fashion takes itself more seriously than I do. I’m not really a fashion photographer.”

Laird Borrelli- Persson wrote for Vogue “Deborah Turbeville’s photographs are as evocative as a lingering trace of fragrance. Not the clear, bright burst of summer floral, but something moody and mysterious that captures the essence of the decaying bloom and the light soft-focus haze of memory.”

In 1975 Turbeville shocked the fashion world by photographing five women “in a condemned New York bathhouse.” The photo was part of a shoot for Vogue, and became famous.

Deborah Turbeville began her journey into photography on her own in the 1960’s. Until 1966, she was completely self-taught. She had worked a sample model for designer Claire McCardell, following that she became a fashion editor at Mademoiselle and Harper’s Bazaar Magazines. Vogue quotes that ” as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazzar, she pushed the sittings she styled to be more than simply straight fashion pictures. (For example, despite her background as a model, she made efforts to cast decidedly non-model types.) After a while, the editor in Chief told Turbeville she was “just too much for this magazine,” and let her go.” The irony of that was that later on they were eager to have her photographs in their magazine!

During her work at Harper’s Bazaar she had met influential people and worked with photographer Richard Avedon. Soon after her departure from Harper’s Bazaar she showed her photographs to him. He was teaching some advanced photography classes with art director Marvin Israel at the time. He felt that her work was advanced and she joined their classes. During her studies with Avedon, he conveyed to her that he believed she would succeed as a photographer.

During the 1980’s Turbeville traveled to Europe numerous times to work on advertising campaigns for designers such as Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro and Comme des Garcon. Her work was frequently published by Italian Vogue, Casa Vogue, the New York Times Magazine and W Magazine. She had an apartment in New York and a home in Sao Miguel de Allende in Mexico. She also spent considerable time in St. Petersburg, Russia and Paris, France.

In 1982, Turbeville won an American Book Award for her series of photographs for “Unseen Versailles.” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the editor of Doubleday at the time, had commissioned her to document the abandoned sections of the backrooms of Versailles. To add a bit of “autumnal aspect” to the settings Turbeville brought in bags of dead leaves and scattered them about the rooms. Turbeville created several other books of her photographs. Casa No Name is a book with photos of her home in the highlands of Mexico. Studio St. Petersburg was created due to her love of this city and her travels there in Russia.

Turbeville died in of lung cancer on October 25, 2013, in New York, at the age of 81.

Deborah Turbeville

1. Wabi-Sabi for Artist, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren pg. 54

2. New York Times, para.9. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/fashion/deborah-turbeville-fashion-photographer-dies-at-81.html?_r=0

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  All written material by Marilyn Lavender.  © Marilyn Lavender, 2015.  “All rights reserved.”