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17/9/2006

Bettina Rheims

Cook Fine Art, New York

Twenty-five Years

Cook Fine Art will present an exhibition of photographs by Bettina Rheims from September 18-October 30, 2006. The show spans a period 25 years from the mid-1980s to the present. Included in the exhibition is a selection of pictures from her first book, Female Trouble, published in 1989, as well as images from the series Chambre close (1992/93), Pourquoi m'a tu abandonne' (1996), and Shanghai (2003).

The pictures in 'Female Trouble' are pictures of women, famous models, movie stars, friends, in various stages of undress, nudity or simply nakedness, in high-contrast black and white. The photographer has called them 'portraits nus'. They elaborate an altogether original vision of glamour. As portraits, they project strength and vulnerability, qualities that recur in the later pictures as well in different combinations.

In the 'Female Trouble' pictures, multiple lighting sources make film noir-ish cast shadows and throw architectural details into forcible relief. Black gloves, dark stockings, a mask, make skin whiter and the image more graphic overall. The models sometimes face the camera, as if posing for a portrait. Often, they look away, distracted, as if suspended in the middle of an action. Either way, the viewer tumbles into the middle of a story. This scenic development of the image re-surfaces in the now legendary 'Chambre close' pictures of the early nineties and continues to define Rheims' celebrity pictures and everything else she does including her fashion editorial work.

She sets up most of her pictures in hotel bedrooms. When the room is not visible, details, like the aggressively shaggy carpet in Elizabeth Berkeley ...suggest a bedroom anyway. Madonna is on the bed, Sylvie is in front of one, and so on. The question emerges, for whom are they posing, or who is watching them?

What's new is that a woman is photographing these women (strippers, models, celebrities, friends, someone off the street), and not a man. In Chambre close, the conceit that a man is picking up and talking various women into posing nude for him defines the role that Bettina Rheims does not assume in the series and gives it an extra edge.

What we see, ultimately, is new way of looking at women. They look different when not offered up as objects of male delectation. All of her models are confident, self-possessed, and project a sort of rough and ready ease that Rheims alone is able to get out of them. There is no coercion here. Catherine Deneuve has observed that Rheims's pictures are harsh, but never vulgar; they are open, not closed. And, mostly, they are fun to look at.

Bettina Rheims became interested in photography in 1978. Her first exhibition of acrobats and strippers took place at the Centre Pompidou in 1980. She completed a series of pictures of stuffed animals and showed them in Paris and New York. In the early 80s she contributed photographs to a host of magazines, including Elle and Paris Match, while working on publicity campaigns for Weill and fashion shots for Chanel. At the same time she began making photos for fashion editorial work in series, album covers and celebrity shots. Her first monograph, Female Trouble, appeared in 1989.

Chambre close appeared in 1992. Working in collaboration with the writer Serge Bramly, the book became a best-seller and continues to be reprinted. From the late 80s on she continued to photograph celebrities - Paloma Picasso, Catherine Deneuve, Sophie Marceau, Jennifer Jason Leigh, to name but a few - and in 1999 made the extraordinary ensemble of photographs, I.N.R.I., based on the life of Christ, made in collaboration with Serge Bramly. The book appeared in Europe, Asia and the U.S. and continues to spark controversy.

In 2003, the photographer spent six months in Shanghai, and produced the eponymous book, a collection of photographs of women from different backgrounds who live in a city undergoing radical changes. More Trouble, appearing in 2004, is a collection of photographs of women celebrities from the previous ten years. A major retrospective exhibition of her work continues to travel in Europe through 2006.

Cook Fine Art
1063 Madison Avenue (bet. 80th and 81st St.) - New York
Tues-Sat 10am-6pm

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