New York Daily News on Simon Bourdin’s Lawsuit

Madonna might consider herself a style innovator, but a lawsuit is slamming the pop star as an imitator.

The Material Girl’s new music video, “Hollywood,” is Exhibit A in a copyright-infringement case accusing her of swiping images from the erotically charged work of the late French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin.
“This is more than inspiration,” said attorney John Koegel, who filed the lawsuit yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court seeking unspecified damages on behalf of Bourdin’s son, Samuel.
“An overwhelming number of all of the scenes in the ?Hollywood’ video are overtly and substantially derived from the Bourdin works,” the lawsuit says.
At least 11 images, including one of Madonna with her legs spread atop a TV set, were copied from Bourdin fashion shoots in the late 1970s and ’80s, the suit charges.
“Factors such as composition, background, wardrobe, lighting, narrative, camera angle, decor and objects depicted are strikingly similar,” the lawsuit says.
“There are very few scenes or sequences in the “Hollywood” video that are not directly derived from the Bourdin works.”
The video’s director, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and Madonna’s record company, Warner Bros., also are named in the lawsuit.
Neither Madonna nor her representatives could be reached yesterday for comment.
Koegel said Madonna and Mondino, who is from France, are “very familiar with Bourdin’s work.”
A week before she filmed the “Hollywood” video, Madonna toured a Bourdin exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the show’s curator Charlotte Cotton told the Dallas Morning News.
Earlier this year, Madonna was quoted in a British newspaper describing Bourdin, who died in 1991, as “so sick and interesting.”

Source: Robert Gearty and Bill Hutchinson, New YorkDaily News