
Dummy Factory
<p>Deborah Turbeville made this picture at the Wolf Dummy Form Factory in 1974 as part of an advertising campaign for shoe designer Charles Jourdan. She featured costumes by then up-and-coming designer Betsey Johnson, who also served as the shoot’s stylist.</p> <p>In the 1970s a handful of female fashion and advertising pho-tographers explored ideas about femininity and sensuality that were previously absent from fashion magazines and thus met with resistance. Turbeville, who began her career as a fashion editor at <em>Harper’s Bazaar</em>, stood apart within this group for her overt rejection of styles that privileged male fantasies—her way of responding to the sexual revolution.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1974
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 15.7 × 23.3 cm (6 3/16 × 9 3/16 in.); Paper: 23.4 × 24.6 cm (9 1/4 × 9 11/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Deborah Turbeville
Artist

Photography
Deborah Turbeville was an American photographer known for her cinematic black-and-white imagery of fashion and the human form in architectural settings. Her work combined fashion photography with fine art sensibility, often staging models in abandoned or austere interiors that created dreamlike, psychologically charged narratives. Working primarily from the 1970s onward, she developed a distinctive visual language that prioritized mood and composition over conventional beauty, influencing editorial and gallery photography practices. Her approach emphasized narrative suggestion rather than straightforward representation.
Full artist profile →More
More by Deborah Turbeville
For Parco
1986 · Toned gelatin silver print
Comme des Garcons, Paris
1980 · Gelatin silver prints
Mary and Katrine
1976 · Gelatin silver print
Bath House, New York City, May 1975
1975 · Gelatin silver print
Bath House, New York City
1975 · Gelatin silver print, with tape
Dummy Factory
1974 · Gelatin silver print
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Deborah Turbeville
- Year
- 1974
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 15.7 × 23.3 cm (6 3/16 × 9 3/16 in.); Paper: 23.4 × 24.6 cm (9 1/4 × 9 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1974-028287
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





