| In 1978, at the age of 26 Bettina Rheims started out photographing. After having worked as a model, a journalist, and an art dealer, she devoted herself in 1980 solely to photography. She makes a first series of strip-tease artists and acrobats, which were shown 1981 in two personal exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, and at the Galerie Texbraun in Paris. Encouraged by this success, she worked on a series of stuffed animals portraits, which were exhibited in Paris and New York. At the same time Rheims completed portraits for international magazines and advertisement campaigns (Well and Chanel), created her first fashion series, cover sleeves, and film posters, and directed in 1986 her first advertising campaign. In 1989 her works of women’s portraits were published in a monograph, Female Trouble, and were exhibited in Germany and Japan. |
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Galerie Jerome de Noirmont
Bettina Rheims, Lara, Janvier 2008, Paris, Just Like a Woman Series, 2008. C-print, 155 x 125 cm. éBettina Rheims. Courtesy of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris.
In 1978, at the age of 26 Bettina Rheims started out photographing. After having worked as a model, a journalist, and an art dealer, she devoted herself in 1980 solely to photography. She makes a first series of strip-tease artists and acrobats, which were shown 1981 in two personal exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, and at the Galerie Texbraun in Paris. Encouraged by this success, she worked on a series of stuffed animals portraits, which were exhibited in Paris and New York.
At the same time Rheims completed portraits for international magazines and advertisement campaigns (Well and Chanel), created her first fashion series, cover sleeves, and film posters, and directed in 1986 her first advertising campaign.
In 1989 her works of women’s portraits were published in a monograph, Female Trouble, and were exhibited in Germany and Japan. In the upcoming year Rheims realized a series of portraits of androgynous teenagers, Modern Lovers, which was also edited and shown in France, Great Britain, and the United States.
Her mythic series Chambre Close, which was realized between 1990 and 1992 in collaboration with Serge Bramly, met an immense success not only in Europe but also all over the world. In the following years Rheims became famous worldwide, and is known now as one of the most important photographers not only in Europe, but also in the Unites States, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Moscow.
This consecration was confirmed by her series I.N.R.I. in 1999, an important photographic project retracing the main scenes of the Bible and the life of Jesus Christ realized in collaboration together with Bramly. The book was published simultaneously in several countries (France, Germany, U.S.A., and Japan), and evoked a big scandal in France. The exhibition is still touring in different museums in Europe.
In 2000, Rheims published X’Mas, a series of photographs of young girls discovering their femininity. Further on, in 2003 her book Shanghai, realized together with Bramly after having spent six months in this city, was published by Robert Laffont. Rheims portrayed the city through the images of women of different backgrounds.
Her book More Trouble, published in 2004, traces ten years of her photography, mostly of famous women. At the same time Rheims’ work was shown in a huge retrospective, touring Helsinki, Oslo, Vienna, Düsseldorf, and Brussels.
Rheims realized Heroïnes in 2005, which contains 23 women’s portraits with an “off-beat” kind of beauty, photographed in a very sober, almost grey monochrome setting with a stone/base as the only feature. In 2006, Heroïnes was exhibited at Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris. A retrospective was presented at Rotterdam, Moscow, and for the last time at Lyon. In 2007, Heroïnes was exhibited at Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, Germany. Last year Rheims had an exhibition at C/O Berlin in March with Philippe Dagen as the curator.
