Bettina Rheims (1952 - )
Biography
Bettina Rheims (born in 1952) is a French artist and photographer. She's the daughter of Maurice Rheims, of the French Academy.
She started as a model, then opened an art gallery, before turning to photography in 1978. She did many commissionned works (albums covers, such as for Jean-Jacques Goldman; photos of various stars...); in 1995, she took the official photograph of Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic.
In 1992, she published Chambre Close, a series of photographs of nude young women in various postures. In 1998, she published, with Serge Bramly, I.N.R.I., retracing the life of Jesus in a contemporary settings. The book was controversial in Christian circles. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettina_Rheims [Aug 2005]
Bettina Rheims, born in Paris in 1952, first exhibited her work in 1981 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. As a photographer of fashion and advertisement, Rheims is renowned for her ability to combine commercial and artistic work. Her publications include Modern Lovers (Paris Audiovisuel, 1990) and Female Trouble (Schirmer-Mosel, 1989) as well as the collaborations with Serge Bramly: I.N.R.I. (Monacelli Press, 1999) and Chambre Close (Gina Kehayoff, 1992). Winner of the City of Paris Photography Grand Prize in 1994, she was chosen to take the official portrait of President Jacques Chirac in 1995. Her most recent work is X’mas (Scheer Editions, 2000), a monograph featuring sixty young girls, posing nude for the first time, in their own universe of unlimited fantasy. Rheims lives in Paris. --http://www.powerhousebooks.com/titles/shanghai.html [Apr 2005]
Chambre close (1992) - Bettina Rheims, Serge Bramly
Chambre close (1992) - Bettina Rheims, Serge Bramly [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Rheims frequently photographs celebrities, and addresses issues of voyeurism and confession, particularly in her 1991-92 project 'Chambre Close', a collaboration with Serge Bramly. This series can be seen as a work of fiction with an obsessive curiosity about women's bodies - trapped in hotel rooms with flowery wallpaper. Yet her work always returns from voyeurism to an examination of gender instability. --http://www.picassomio.com/BettinaRheims/ [Aug 2005]
See also: Bettina Rheims Google gallery [Safesearch must be turned off]
see also: Bettina Rheims - fashion photography - erotic photography
Bettina Rheims: More Trouble (2004) - Bettina Rheims
Bettina Rheims: More Trouble (2004) - Bettina Rheims [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Product Description:
Bettina Rheims came to worldwide fame in the early 80s with sensational nudes and portraits. As a sequel to her legendary, mostly black-and-white publication Female Trouble, first published by Schirmer/Mosel in 1989, More Trouble presents new photographic visions of glamour, beauty, fashion, sex, and seduction, created from the 90s to the present day. They include portraits of Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Ludivine Sagnier, Emmanuelle Beart, Brooke Shields, Liv Tyler, Isabella Rossellini, Salma Hayek, to name just a few. This time, however, her pictures are mostly in color. And they include men, such as Jackie Chan, Michael Douglas, James King, Tupac Shakur, Mickey Rourke, Marilyn Manson, and Emir Kusturica. Once again, Bettina Rheims proves her extraordinary originality, her empathy, her sense of style, and her feeling for pictorial eroticism.
Bettina Rheims: Retrospective (2004) - Bettina Rheims, Serge Bramly (Contributor) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Product Description:
Since the early 80s, Bettina Rheims has been one of the most sought-after contemporary photographers. She came to fame with unusual portraits of women and female nudes. Both celebrities and unknowns posed for her in stagings of glamour and fame, of fashion, beauty, sex, and seduction. Her subject is the visualization of female eroticism in its sensual, emotional and disquieting varieties, her trademark is a sensitive and delicate, yet provocative approach to the subject. In 2004, the Helsinki City Art Museum organizes the first major retrospective of Bettina Rheims’ work, presenting important series, such as "Female Trouble," "Modern Lovers," "The Spies," "INRL," and "Why did you forsake me?" The exhibition will subsequently travel to Oslo, Aarhus, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and Berlin.
The publication accompanying the exhibition provides a representative overview of her works between 1979 and 2002.
Bettina Rheims: Female Trouble - Bettina Rheims
Rheims’s classic examination of women is a groundbreaking foray into the world of portraiture and studio work. In more than one hundred technically sublime photographs, mostly black and white, Rheims presents a visual cornucopia of women of all types. There are famous models and actresses, including Naomi Campbell, Anna Karina, Lauren Bacall, Glenn Close, and Anouk Aimee. But there are also circus performers, nude dancers, friends and strangers. Whether the shot is candid or posed, the mood tender or harsh, the setting elaborately staged or forgettably mundane, Rheims infuses her work with a unique and personal vision of the subject before her. Furthermore, she displays an uncanny ability to extract poses and expressions a man would never achieve from his female models. Their bodies are exquisitely free, confident, and open, their expressions both trusting and daring. Erotically charged without being kinky, Female Trouble is both a celebration of women’s protean nature and a tribute to their strength and independence. --via Amazon.com
I.N.R.I. (1999) - Bettina Rheims, Serge Bramly
I.N.R.I. (1999) - Bettina Rheims, Serge Bramly [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Booklist
Bramly and Rheims either put their foot in it or put their best foot forward with the picture on the dust jacket. It shows a beautiful young woman, clad only in a loincloth, on a cross, imitating Christ. In the book, a dazzling photographic re-presentation of the life of Jesus, this image appears in a tryptich that dispels any hint of mockery. By itself on the cover, it may infuriate sacrilege-sensitive souls, who then, if they only glance at other pictures inside, may go ballistic. Reading the text and looking again, however, may calm some of them. That text, Bramly's work, is a serious conflation of the four gospels and a few noncanonical legends that modernizes nothing. Bramly and Rheims' photos are another story. They show mostly young people coiffed, made-up, and dressed in contemporary styles in contemporary settings, reenacting Gospel events, miracles and all. Initially surprising, these revisionings really just follow the lead of medieval and Renaissance Christian art, which portrayed biblical persons in their eras' trappings, too. Challenging and reverent. Ray Olson via Amazon.com
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