Bettina is back. 35 years of daring, defiant photography

Since her first photographs in the late ’70s, Bettina Rheims has defied the predictable. From her series on Pigalle strippers (1980) to her cycle on the life of Jesus in I.N.R.I. (1998), from Chanel commercials to Gender Studies (2011), her work has shaken up traditional iconography and pushed restlessly at the breaking point between two great human preoccupations: beauty and imperfection.

This Rheims retrospective showcases more than 500 photographs from 35 years of daring, often defiant, photography. Personally selected and assembled by Rheims, the collection juxtaposes renowned series such as Chambre Close, Héroïnes, and Rose, c’est Paris with many previously unpublished archival images and entries from Rheims’s own “diaries,” detailing behind-the-scenes work and personal memories.

Spanning commercial work and artistic series, the retrospective impresses with each turn of the page, as much for the strength of each image as for the thrilling variety of Rheims’s subjects and aesthetics. With equal attention to anonymous subjects cast in the street as to global celebrities, including Kate Moss, Madonna, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, the book showcases Rheims’s particular interest in female fragility and strength, and of the magic encounter between model and artist which disrupts codes of so-called eroticism to build up a new image system for womanhood.

Bettina is back. 35 years of daring, defiant photography

Since her first photographs in the late ’70s, Bettina Rheims has defied the predictable. From her series on Pigalle strippers (1980) to her cycle on the life of Jesus in I.N.R.I. (1998), from Chanel commercials to Gender Studies (2011), her work has shaken up traditional iconography and pushed restlessly at the breaking point between two great human preoccupations: beauty and imperfection.

This Rheims retrospective showcases more than 500 photographs from 35 years of daring, often defiant, photography. Personally selected and assembled by Rheims, the collection juxtaposes renowned series such as Chambre Close, Héroïnes, and Rose, c’est Paris with many previously unpublished archival images and entries from Rheims’s own “diaries,” detailing behind-the-scenes work and personal memories.

Spanning commercial work and artistic series, the retrospective impresses with each turn of the page, as much for the strength of each image as for the thrilling variety of Rheims’s subjects and aesthetics. With equal attention to anonymous subjects cast in the street as to global celebrities including Kate Moss, Madonna, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, the book showcases Rheims’s particular interest in female fragility and strength, and of the magic encounter between model and artist which disrupts codes of so-called eroticism to build up a new image system for womanhood.

Femme Fantômas. A detective story, told in photos and film, that unfolds in the streets, cafés, cabarets, abandoned factories, and grand hotels of Paris

Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly's Rose, c'est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film on DVD. This extraordinary work of art, in two different but interlocking and complementary formats, defies easy categorization. For in this multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and writer Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen manipulation, obsession, fetish, and seething desire.

Equal parts erotica, fashion shoot, art monograph, metaphysical mystery, social and cultural archaeology of the French capital, and neo-noir art-house film - Rose, c'est Paris is the steamy tale of twin sisters, known only as B and Rose, and a third principal - the city itself. An abduction leads to a detective story that unfolds in the streets, cafés, cabarets, museums, abandoned factories, and grand hotels of Paris. What happened to the missing sister? Was there a plot? Was she really kidnapped? Is she alive or dead? Is it, in fact, a case of mistaken identity? Rheims and Bramly create a series of extraordinary tableaux suggesting all these possibilities and many more, featuring a host of celebrity figures, including Naomi Campbell, Michelle Yeoh, Monica Bellucci, Charlotte Rampling, Valérie Lemercier, Inès Sastre, Anna Mouglalis, Audrey Marnay, Anthony Delon, Rona Hartner, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Azzedine Alaïa, Louise Bourgoin, and Hélèna Noguerra.

After our limited and art editions, this book is now available in a trade edition.

The artists:
French artist Bettina Rheims produced numerous major photographic series, which have been exhibited all over the world. Her books include Female Trouble (1989), Modern Lovers (1990), Chambre Close (1994), I.N.R.I. (1998), X'Mas (2000), Shanghai (2003), Héroïnes (2007), and The Book of Olga (2008 for TASCHEN).

Serge Bramly is an artist, writer and essayist and frequently collaborates on artistic and photographic projects with Bettina Rheims. His books include Leonardo: The Artist and the Man (1995) and Le Premier Principe (Prix Interallié, 2008).

Будучи фигурой экстравагантной и не лишенной стремления эпатировать, Реймс для критиков и искусствоведов — более чем желанный фотограф. Высказывания о ней могут быть чрезвычайно негативными. После демонстрации серии «INRI» (трактование библейских сюжетов) в 1997 году ее обвиняли во всех смертных грехах, наделяли самыми резкими эпитетами, уличали и в отсутствии меры, и в богохульстве.

Famous for her unusual portraits of women and female nudes, French photographer Bettina Rheims focus is the visualization of female eroticism. She will be celebrated in a major travelling retrospective starting in Helsinki in February 2004. This accompanying book provides a representative overview of her work created between 1979 and 2002.

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. He 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," "INRI," 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.

94 colour and duotone plates

Since th eearly 1980x, Bettina Rheims has been the most sought-after French photographer. From her very beginnings, the female body has been the central focus of her work. Her unusual and provocative portraits and nude images each reveal a hidden part of the subject. She regularly caused stirs with projects such as Chambre close (1992), the story of a Paris voyeur watching women in hotels; KIM, a docuemntary ona transsexual;  I.N. R.I (1999), a sequence on the life of Chris, Shanghai (2004), featuring women in the midst of a powerful cultural, economic and spiritual evolution, and, most recently, Heroines (2006). This volume is a Best of. . . survey of Bettina Rheims' photographic oeuvre of 30 years.

Bettina Rheims, born in Paris in 1952, started her career in 1978 with a series on female acrobats and strippers. She has worked for major fashion magazines. The 1994 recpient of the Grand prix de la photographie, she took the official portrait of newly-elected French president Jacques Chirac in 1995 and was appointed Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 2002. She lives in Paris.

53 colour plates

50 models in 2005 haute couture creations staged and photographed by Bettina Rheims. Her pictures don’t simply transform glamorous nymphettes into fashion photos. They subtly subvert the commercial, voyeuristic gaze, opening up fascinatingly unsettling views into the world of fashion and those who wear it.

85 colour plates

The first joint project of photographer Bettina Rheims and writer/art critic Serge Bramly. The cultivated literary confessions of Monsieur X, a perfectly discreet voyeur with an obsessive curiosity about the female body, are set against photographs speaking a far clearer language that tells of female eroticism and exhibitionism as no one else does.

Bettina Rheims came to fame in the 80s with sensational nudes and portraits and her legendary book ‘Female Trouble’. The sequel, ‘More Trouble’ presents her latest photographic visions of female glamour, beauty, fashion, fame, sex, and seduction. Once again, Rheims gives proof of her extraordinary originality and her sensitivity for both the manifold facets of femininity and pictorial eroticism.

Bettina Rheims, born in Paris in 1952, is one of the most sought after photographers in France. Both famous and unknown women have posed for her unusual portraits and nude photographs, which particularly contributed to her fame: film stars, artists, models, friends, acrobats and nude dancers at fairs. Over one hundred photographs exhibit Bettina Rheims’ individuality, intuition, confident approach and feeling for the facets of female charisma and erotic photography.