Photography Collection

Stretched out on colored sheets, the women for this new series remind us of the Chambre Close models who posed against very different backgrounds of colorfully-painted paper; in the same manner, here, each sheet corresponds to one woman. Photographing her models from above for the first time, and in doing so, placing them closer to her, in a relationship of proximity and intimacy during the session, Bettina Rheims seems to capture these women upon awakening in the morning or in an in-between moment, one of “beautiful agony,” between ecstasy and suffering… Only the look in their eyes has the capacity to help us understand their innermost feelings in this ephemeral moment. These women pose nude or in lingerie, their cheeks are red from the suffering that dwells within them and their ruddy skin bears clear impressions, including those of their undergarments… As distinguished from the Héroïnes1, their eyes are not wild, and the marks on their bodies are not witnesses to the sorrows and stigmas of life. On the contrary, once arranged in these large-size photographs (155 x 125 cm), they suddenly express an outpouring, like recumbent statues that are raised up, an outpouring that here is linked to desire…

As the exposition shows (Bettina Rheims – Can You Find Happiness, currently at the C/O Berlin), portraits of women are the heart of the artist’s work. This new series fits in very logically, with its fresh look at what a woman is in our contemporary society. Just Like a Woman is a snapshot of those secret moments of complete ecstasy that today’s woman can freely experience. After the success of her grand European museum retrospective, from Helsinki in February 2004 to Lyon in July-August 2006, this new, colorful series shows us, once more, the quality of Bettina Rheims’ portraits and their ability to reveal the deepest human feelings through an eye that is always supremely sensitive.