PHOTO:Bettina Rheims – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

After having already enjoyed careers as a model, journalist and gallerist, Bettina Rheims began to explore photography at the age of 26, and has since become one of France’s most internationally acclaimed contemporary practitioners. Her style has often been shaped by the glamour of fashion photography, yet she has also explored religious subjects, picturing scenes from the life of Christ.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Xippas Gallery Archive

Bettina Rheims in her solo exhibition, at Xippas Gallery in Geneva, presents photos made between 1994 and 2013, samples from some emblematic series of the artist “Pourquoi m’as tu abandonnée ?” and “Héroïnes”. At first glance, the photographs of Bettina Rheims appear sleek and professional and perfectly composed. The pictures are handsome. As a former member of the glamour business, she’s got the seductive language of media imagery down pat. Her work can easily be admired and dismissed as brilliant celebrity portraiture and stylish magazine photography. But it would be a mistake to jump to such conclusions. Her relentless exploration of the glamorous image demands a different kind of scrutiny. Bettina Rheims’ prime subject is glamour. Not sentiment, not nostalgia, and – though it can be a useful element – not even beauty. Just pure glamour, which has little to do with fame or celebrity, even though Claudia Schiffer, Kylie Minogue, Angelina Jolie, and Madonna make cameo appearances in her staged photographs. Their images are no more or less special than those of the nameless temptresses, seductresses, strippers, shop-girls, and models in garter belts or lingerie. Sexy nudes, glamorous transsexuals, boudoir semi-nudes in poses of mock-abandon, and portraits of naughty ingenues with perfectly glistening flesh share equally in her fictive portraits and scenes. Overly red lipstick and a dangling cigarette are more overt elements of image construction than a recognizable name, because what is at the core of these pictures is always an awareness of the creation of an illusion, for that’s what glamour is. In the early 1990s, Bettina Rheims simultaneously worked in France and the United States, producing fashion series for numerous magazines and posters for movies. She came to realize the inevitable entanglement between her personal practice and what she created on demand, therefore decided to gather samples of different projects and created a new series of photos; “Pourquoi m’as tu abandonnée ?”. The representation and construction of femininity are her favorite subjects, a quasi-obsession of the artist. The woman photographed by Bettina Rheims is not only exposing herself, she actually is freeing herself, deconstructing her image as she is discovering her body. It is a representation of unusual beauty portrayed through particularly and meticulous well-thought staging, as well as using specific scenarios imagined and mastered by the artist. Bettina Rheims therefore raises the question of a potential compatibility between feminism and fashion photography. For the series “Héroïnes” Bettina Rheims invited 23 women that she had wanted to take pictures of since a long time; some of them she already knew, others attracted her because of their charisma or their iconic influence. “Melancholy is a lonely woman sitting on a rock, lost in her own thoughts, gazing into the distance”. Inspired by this quote by Jean Clair that appeared in the exhibition “Mélancolie” at Le Grand Palais in 2005, the artist decides to build a rock inside her studio. The rock transforms itself into a sort of pedestal for her models to take procession of its essence, and eventually get lost in it. The series is effectively a tribute to sculpture. Women spurting out from the rock, dissolving into the understructure without touching the ground, like one of Rodin’s girls or an idol of the Cyclades.

Info: Xippas Gallery, Rue des Sablons 6 & rue des Bains 61, Geneva, Duration: 17/11/18-12/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.xippas.com