Bettina Rheims

Nascimento : 1952-12-18, Paris, France

História

Bettina Caroline Germaine Rheims (born 18 December 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French photographer. Bettina Rheims was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Her photographic career began in 1978, when she took a series of photos of a group of strip-tease artists and acrobats, which would lead to her first exhibitions. This work would unveil Bettina Rheims' favourite subject, the female model, to which she would frequently return during her career. The 1980s provided Bettina Rheims with the opportunity to take several portraits of both famous and unknown women, resulting in the publication of Female Trouble (1989). In 1982, the Animal series enabled Rheims' to train her lens on another form of nudity: that of stuffed animals with fixed stares, "which seemed to want to express something beyond death". "I had to capture their gaze" declared the photographer. With Modern Lovers (1989-1990) the photographer questioned gender, androgyny and transsexuality. Two other publications on the same subject followed: Les Espionnes (1992) and Kim (1994). At the beginning of the 1990s, Bettina Rheims worked on one of her major series, entitled Chambre Close (1990-1992). This was her first in colour and marked the start of her collaboration with the novelist Serge Bramly, in a work which saw her photographs coupled with the writer's fiction. In its form, Chambre Close is a parody of the first pornographic photos — rooms with faded walls, old fashioned wallpaper — yet, in its substance, it endeavours to stage amateur models in poses playing on the eroticism and the confusion between those who are looking and those who are showing themselves. "By using colour and extreme quality printings, the flesh appears living and gives a disconcerting realism to the work. Bettina Rheims thus transcends the body to reach primitive femininity in her psychoanalytical "id" - her more or less pent-up impulses, sexual impulses in particular. At the same time as these impulses show through the surface, the awareness of the model, through her skin, the artist captures them on film." In 1995, Rheims was invited by Jacques Chirac at the end of his presidential campaign to work behind the scenes on a series of photographs following the final stages of the election. After the election, the Presidency of the French Republic commissioned Bettina Rheims to take the official portrait of Jacques Chirac. She told the newspaper Libération that she had wanted to give the President "the relaxed look of the great heroes in westerns". She was featured in Maya Gallus's 1997 documentary film Erotica: A Journey Into Female Sexuality. The decade drew to a close with the 1999 publication of the book I.N.R.I. and its eponymous exhibition. Once again uniting the gaze of Rheims with the prose of Serge Bramly, I.N.R.I. builds a philosophical dialogue on the history of the crucifixion through photographs of scenes of the life of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Ascension. Bettina Rheims proposed "illustrations in step with our times, after the appearance of photography, cinema and advertising imagery, as if Jesus were returning today." [note]. In France, the publication of this work was highly controversial. ... Source: Article "Bettina Rheims" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Filmes

Rose, c'est Paris
Cinematography
Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly's Rose, c'est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film. 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.
Erotica: A Journey Into Female Sexuality
Self
This feature-length documentary explores a wide range of lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women’s erotic fantasies and sexual practices. It reveals the conflicts and complexities of female sexuality as well as the joys and triumphs of self-discovery and personal empowerment.
Feliz Ano Novo
Young Saleswoman
No final de 1972, o vigarista e ladrão Simon recebe uma permissão para celebrar o Ano Novo fora da Prisão La Santé. Quando estava indo para seu apartamento em Paris para encontrar sua amante Françoise, Simon percebe que um carro está perseguindo o seu táxi. No apartamento, Simon percebe que Françoise tem um amante e deixa o local sem ser notado. Simon lembra o Natal de 1966, quando ele viaja para para Cannes fora da temporada de verão com seu parceiro e amigo Charlot para assaltar a joalheria Van Cleef Arpels. Enquanto traça um esquema para roubar os joalheiros, Simon encontra a antiquária e intelectual Françoise cuja loja é vizinha de lado do alvo. Ele se apaixona por ela. Mas seu plano não funciona como previsto e Simon é preso.