Deborah Turbeville grew up in New England, Boston, and on the rock coast of Maine, where she developed a fascination with environments. She moved to New York before she was 20 and worked for designer Claire McCardell. Turbeville credits the innovative McCardell as a major influence on her career, first as an editor at Harper's Bazaar and Mademoiselle and later as a photographer.
An acclaimed photo-artist, Turbeville’s elusive and evocative style transforms fashion photography into avant-garde art. Her soft-focused and pointillistic work appears regularly in American, French, and Italian editions of Vogue, Zoom, French Camera and Mirabella. Her work is exhibited internationally and in recent years she has shown at the Musee Beaubourg of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; New York’s Sonnabend Gallery; Il Ponte, Rome; and at Seibu and Parco in Japan. Previous books include Wallflower and Unseen Versailles, for which she received the American Book Award in 1982. In 1993, the Art Institute of Boston awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in recognition of Turbeville’s “rare ability to bring her art to her commercial work.”
Before her death in 2013, Turbeville, spent most of her time in New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Russia and at her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
