Deborah Turbeville
[Photographer, b. 1932, Medford, Massachusetts, d. 2013, New York.]
A lot of times there were big mistakes, but I would show the art director and he’d say, “Yeah, let’s go with it.” There would be a strange cropping or one girl in focus and three out or a blur. But I would end up liking the mistakes and incorporating them into my work. And I became known for it.
I destroy the image after I’ve made it, obliterate it a little so you never have it completely there.
I have an instinct for finding the odd location, the dismissed face, the eerie atmosphere, the oppressed mood.
In these times aesthetic taste is dismissed as irrelevant. Well, I am perverse, for that reason I am more drawn to it than ever. I have been described as having style, of being a mannered photographer… it’s some people’s quarrel with my work and others’ fascination.
It is the psychological tone and mood that I work for.
I don’t consider [my] photographs fashion photographs. The photographs were for fashion, but at the same time they had an ulterior motive, something more to do with the world in general.
It’s seeing all those people who you’ve seen for years, who’ve spent fifty years of their lives just looking at clothes. I mean, I’ve got nothing against them. It’s not really a feminist point; it’s just that I don’t want to be there. (On fashion photography)