ARTISTS/WRITERS: DEBORAH

(re-posted from August 2025…)

I'm not certain where I first met Deborah Turbeville but it may have been at the same dinner table in Mexico where I was introduced to Bridget Tichenor. (See earlier post: Bridget) I had heard of her - she was, after all, a celebrated fashion and art photographer - but knew little more. I do recall that we quickly fell into conversation about writers, and that she seemed to have read everything. We talked about a recent edition of Paul Bowles’ short stories and things took off from there.

She lived in an old house she’d bought in the town and was fixing up. She’d fly down from New York and hole up there for days, reading Proust and the Russians. Then a dozen tall skinny models, assistants, and stylists would fly in from Europe or New York and they'd traipse off to Pozos, an abandoned nearby mining town, to shoot among the ruins for Vogue or Mademoiselle. Deborah would emerge from her reveries and direct the shoot, utterly focused and in total command. Then the crew would disappear and she would go back to her Tolstoy and fixing up her house.

Her renown in the world of art and fashion rested lightly upon her, and she could be witty, full of mischievous war stories from the fashion world, and resolutely indifferent to everyday realities. She had an apartment in New York at the Ansonia, a legendary midtown building, and visiting her entailed running a gauntlet of rehearsing opera singers echoing through the corridors. Her apartment resembled a set from a Jean Cocteau film, full of curtains and drapes and mysterious objects collected from her travels, echoing the haunted beauty of her photographs. An old television played DVD’s of Tarkovsky and Antonioni and Pasolini films. (Her languid, dramatic photos often appeared like stills from movies.) Deborah lived on a daily diet of the highest forms of art she knew of.

We began collaborating on a few magazine projects, my texts accompanying her photos. (See earlier post: Atotonilco). We’d visit locations together, which was always an adventure, but we’d leave each other alone in terms of the work, assuming we each knew what we were doing and what we were after. It was interesting, and instructive, watching Deborah work, though. Technically, she knew just enough to get what she needed and no more, often relying upon assistants; but her vision was as clear as day, sometimes involving complex mise en scènes, and her inimitable photos were the stuff of dreams.

One memory of Deborah from that time keeps crowding out others, perhaps because it says so much to me about how she operated in reality, or didn’t. We were flying to Los Angeles to do a piece for a magazine, and as the plane was making its approach, Deborah looked out the window at the sea below and said, “What ocean is that?” Slightly astonished, I answered, “The Pacific.” Deborah didn't know how to drive. She couldn't find where she left her spectacles. She was utterly distracted when it wasn’t about the art that interested her; then she became supremely, heroically attentive.

Her vision was very much a radical female gaze. She provided inspiration to a new generation of photographers, particularly women, as an example of what can be done. During the years I knew her, she would fly to St. Petersburg every summer to teach. It gave her a chance to be in literary terrain she adored, and she loved working with young Russian photographers.

Deborah took care of herself. She ate healthy foods and drank herbal teas. She didn’t smoke. So it came as an utter shock when news came of her death from lung cancer. Darkroom chemicals? We're left to wonder. I'd seen her a few months before, in Mexico on a shoot, and she’d had a mild cough we attributed to a cold. Then suddenly she was gone.

She didn't have a family, and after she passed friends were invited to her house to select things they might care to have. From this act of generosity, I have some books on Proust and Picasso, a couple of paintings, and a heavy iron bed from a Paris flea market she’d somehow managed to transport to Mexico.

Deborah Turbeville was all about her art. Her best work transcended fashion, and during her lifetime and after, she had numerous gallery and museum showings. Her house in Mexico, a personal refuge for her when she was alive, is now an exclusive boutique hotel, celebrating her memory and preserving at least some of her aesthetic personality and the treasures she collected there.

One time we ended up together in Antigua, Guatemala, doing a piece for a magazine. She shot an indelible series of Mayan women among ruins there. It later appeared in books and museum shows. She gifted me this print, which hangs in my hallway, greeting visitors.