Guy Bourdin moved the fashion shoot far beyond the mere touting of garments and into a world redolent of sex, violence and the macabre through his frequently shocking commercial campaigns and editorial work. As today's fashion culture testifies, in this the influential Parisian photographer was prescient, not least his view that the product is incidental—what matters is the image.

On the set of his meticulously executed shoots, Bourdin would sometimes bring out a super-8 cine camera, a technique showcased here in one of several pieces from a new London show of his work from 1955 to 1987. In some aspects the footage captures the essence of Bourdin; in others it is spookily atypical.

Perhaps most notorious for the morbid look of his models, Bourdin draped their inert bodies in the backs of cars and on the floors of hotel rooms. Naked she may be, and therefore vulnerable, but the girl we see here is conversely a picture of playfulness and animation. There is no soundtrack, so it's hard to know what is really going on. Maybe the unseen photographer is barking orders at her.

Bourdin's mother abandoned him soon after he was born, after which he only ever saw her once. The meeting haunted him and he would revisit her look time and again in the models he chose to photograph: as here, much of his work is a curious kind of monument to pale-skinned women with red hair.

Tom Horan is Culture Editor-at-Large at NOWNESS.

Guy Bourdin: Image Maker is at Somerset House from November 27.