BETTINA RHEIMS

 

Bettina Rheims was born in 1952 in Paris, where she still lives and works today. In 1978 she began to take photographs in the street, where she met some strippers. This meeting was the inspiration behind a series of nude photographs published in 1980 in "Egoïste", which introduced her to the public. Two simultaneous solo exhibitions were dedicated to her in the early eighties at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Galerie Texbraun in Paris. In this period she began to contribute regularly to the magazines "Elle" and "Paris Match", creating fashion photography and advertising campaigns.
In the early nineties she produced the Modern Lovers series in her studio, made up of black and white portraits of androgynous adolescents. The series was shown at the opening of the Maison Européenne de la Photographique in Paris, at the Hamiltons Gallery in London and at Pace MacGill in New York. Around the same time she began to collaborate with the author Serge Bramly and they created Chambre Close, an initial series of colour photographs of women in hotel rooms accompanied by text. Chambre Close was shown worldwide and the book was an enormous success. 
In 1995 Bettina Rheims created an official portrait of Jacques Chirac, from whom she received the Legione d’Onore in 2002 for her career. Retrospectives have been dedicated to her worldwide and she continues to create portraits of famous women.