guy bourdin’s exclusive photographs lead net-a-porter art selling with AP8

The start of AP8

When AP8 curator and co-founder Viola Raikhel and her team imagined what collecting art and products of photography could look like, they veered from delving into the industry in a heartbeat but learned it first to understand what makes art covetable and collectible. They pursued to unveil why had this been missing online. They noticed how online art platforms practice the tradition of mass collecting by hosting hundreds of artists and making their works available in many sizes and frame options, perhaps without consideration of their overall quality and impact on the collectors and clients.

As a response, they established AP8 which has taken the guesswork out of buying art by curating museum-quality artworks accompanied with the provenance to authenticate and value artwork as one builds their collection. The company works directly with artists and their estates to guarantee each collection is curated and produced as a unique series of certified limited editions. The company writes that AP8 artworks are delivered framed and ready to display at home just as the artist intended it, white gloves and all, and that all AP8 collections are available until sold out and never reproduced again.

‘Collecting art, like collecting anything, is about what you desire, what you love, and what you consider valuable. AP8 brings you art to love, covet and collect,’ Raikhel writes. Such a mission has grown its roots and touchpoints as the company partners with luxury online retailer Net-a-Porter to offer the public quality-based, limited-edition prints and frames from the world’s revered artists, starting with French photographer Guy Bourdin, the dubbed ‘the God of Fashion Photography.’

images courtesy of the Guy Bourdin Estate, AP8, and Net-a-Porter

Luxury brands meet art

‘There is no more fabulous treasure trove for all things fashion, luxury, and beauty than Net-A-Porter. The arbiter of taste for incredible women, Net-A-Porter has forever changed how we shop; now they are changing how we collect art too,’ Raikhel writes. Through this collaboration, Net-A-Porter now launches art selling on its site, rubbing shoulders with the most coveted designer brands including Gucci, Cartier, Chloe, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Prada, and Stella McCartney, to name a few.‘

Raikhel continues that Net-A-Porter has partnered with AP8 to curate collections of art to be positioned next to luxury and fashion must-haves. For the curator and co-founder, the collaboration distills everything that makes art covetable and collectible, taking the guesswork out of buying art while coupled with a seamless shopping experience, the two passions that make up the cornerstones of AP8. The first series the collaboration released features a series of ten framed photographs by French artist and fashion photographer Guy Bourdin. Guy Bourdin, who Raikhel calls ‘the most influential fashion photographer of our time, single-handedly transformed his medium into fine art.’

Interested clients could only acquire these exclusive prints through Net-A-Porter with less than 100 units of each piece available. This selection of his most iconic and recognizable images has previously only been seen in museums, publications, and select galleries worldwide, but today, buyers and collectors across the globe may have the opportunity to keep these treasured souvenirs in their private, cherished spaces. AP8 has digitally verified each piece through a technique called stenographic cryptography. ‘That is a fancy way of saying hidden to the human eye and only detectable by digitally scanning for them,’ Raikhel adds. A certification code is also registered to each artwork to provide a provenance record.

Guy Bourdin framed print, 43” x 29”

Guy Bourdin and the fashion of photography

Born in France in 1928, Guy Bourdin dabbled in experimental photography, predominantly adopting color as the driving force of his imagery. Bourdin was a key contributor to French Vogue from 1955 to the end of the 80s, often presenting what in those eras were deemed as ‘bold, provocative images with a unique contemporary aesthetic.’ His body of work overlaps between surrealism and subjective photography, drawing on the past for the influence of surrealism which can be seen in the way Bourdin approached still life and portraiture.

Anchoring the eye of a painter, Bourdin created images that spoke of stories via their compositions, both in monochrome and color. He conversed with his audience through the narratives in his images, implying that the image underscores the essence of the product displays. Using fashion photography as his medium, his messages expired the realms between the absurd and the sublime, as one may see through the photographs in this article, all of which savor the luxury of suggestive narratives and surreal aesthetics, relentless perfectionism and sharp humor, and his aura as a perfectionist image-maker.

His images halt steps and grab attention, thanks to his direction, style, and vision. He created his photoshoot settings in bedrooms, on the beach, in nature, or in urban landscapes, and the drama and tension that unfold in these everyday scenes pique a viewer’s subconscious, an invitation to enter his imagination. He also infused his images with hyper colors to lull the viewers where to lay their eyes and structured compositions of cropped elements such as low skies with high grounds and the interplay of light and shadows.