Deborah Turbeville

2007 Honoree / Achievement In Fashion

DEBORAH TURBEVILLE is an internationally acclaimed photographer, who is accredited with changing the face of fashion photography. She established her reputation with highly original work that is both visionary and immediately recognizable.

Deborah’s New England upbringing gave her a fascination with environments, which is still reflected in her evocative work today. She moved to New York City before she was 20 and worked for designer Claire McCardell, who was a major influence on her career, first as an editor at Harper?s Bazaar and Mademoiselle, then as a photographer. Turbeville?s elusive style transforms fashion photography into avant-garde art. Her photographs draw the viewer in with their unique vision and with the poetic ambiance in which her models are placed. Her unfettered yet definite style survives time and transcends trends.

Her editorial work appears regularly in such publications as American, British, French, Italian, and Russian Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue, Zoom, and W. Deborah Turbeville’s photographic essays in 2004 have included “Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico” (Casa, July 2004), “Russian Soul” (Harper’s Bazaar, December 2004), “Julia Roberts” (The New York Times Magazine, November 14, 2004), and “Ritual Fashion” (BlackBook, December 2004/January 2005). Monographs of her work include “Wallflower” (1978), “Newport Remembered” (1994) and “Studio St. Petersburg” (1997). Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums globally.

Deborah Turbeville’s distinctively evocative style was recognized by the Fashion Group Lifetime Award for Fashion Photography in 1989 and the Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Magazine Photography in 1998 for the Fashion Single Image and Photo Essay. In 2002, she received the prestegious Fulbright scholarship for a lecture series in Photography at the Baltic School of Photography in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2005, she was honored with the ICP Award for Applied Photography.

An influential and prominent figure in contemporary photography, her redolent images are published in numerous books and feature regularly in major fashion magazines.