Must See Exhibit: Provocative Sensuality by Bettina Rheims
Paris-born photographer Bettina Rheims has launched a major exhibition of her work at Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), running from January 28 to March 27. The works, accumulated throughout almost four decades of Rheims’ career, expose her discovery of a feminine sensuality and eroticism in photography. A retrospective combination of her earliest works with her most recent series occupies three floors of the MEP and takes an intimate yet provocative journey through erotic beauty.
Image credit: Bettina Rheims
Driven by instinct and a free spirit, Rheims got her start photographing striptease artists and acrobats at Pigalle. Later, she worked with celebrities such as Milla Jovovich, Madonna, Monica Bellucci, and Kate Moss (before she became an icon). Rheims was mentored by Helmut Newton and took an official portrait of President Jacques Chirac in 1995. However, Rheims’ main themes and areas of interest concern feminine sexuality and questions of gender ambiguity.
Image credit: Bettina Rheims
Rheims’ works are provocative and controversial, but, above all, they’re erotic. She celebrates a woman’s body and its sensual intimacy. Every work is a personal conversation between Rheims and her model. “I shoot women because I know them, as I’m a woman myself. I understand their fears. I have their same hang-ups. I make the same dreams. It’s more exciting for me to penetrate a woman’s mind. It’s like doing a self-portrait,” she said in she said in a recent interview with Refinery29.
Image credit: Bettina Rheims
Her lens exposes the inner personality of each woman, and each frame contains a sense of privacy.
Rheims explored various perspectives on the sensual representation of gender in her Modern Lovers series (1990), and she pushed that theme further in Gender Studies (2011) through photographs of transsexual models. She also juxtaposed traditional culture and modern desire in Chinese Women in Shanghai (2002).
Image credit: Bettina Rheims
Rheims’ photography captures moments in time, but these are in the context of a narrative with its own story and secrets.
Rheims’ works are in the public collections of major galleries and museums, such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum for Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; and Sammlung Essl, Vienna. She has also held several solo exhibitions worldwide — in the United States, Japan, and major cities in Europe.
Image credit: Bettina Rheims
The pieces in Rheims’ Maison Européenee de la Photographie exhibit are not arranged retrospectively. Rather, they fuse different periods, which transforms the exhibition space into a sensational journey of human sexuality as captured by one of the most important modern French photographers.
