“Guy Bourdin is not an artist with whom I have a lot in common,” Giorgio Armani writes, “but what strikes me the most—and what I wanted to focus on—is instead his creative freedom. . . . Bourdin did not follow the crowd and he did not compromise and I identify with that.” Born in Paris in 1928, Bourdin belongs to the same generation as Armani, and was equally radical. He began as a painter, but after a stint in Dakar with the Royal Air Force, in the 1950s, Bourdin picked up a camera. When he returned to Paris he sought out Man Ray, whose wife turned him away six times. Eventually Ray met with Bourdin, made him a protégé, and the rest is history. Bourdin’s artful, aggressive photographs appeared in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar; his painterly style redefined fashion photography. A retrospective of his work now fills Armani’s exhibition space in Milan. —Elena Clavarino