Madonna, Monica Bellucci… Bettina Rheims has honored so many beauty icons in her exhibition “Why Did You Abandon Me?”. Find them at the Charles Nรจgre Museum of Photography in Nice until September 29.
Bettina Rheims exhibits these female portraits she has captured over the years from Los Angeles to Paris, between 1994 and 2013. When she photographs for magazine covers, advertisements, or film releases, she explains: “the image is destined to disappear.”
So with the exhibition “Why Did You Abandon Me?”, Bettina wishes to give them another life. She draws from her work to reveal art pieces.
“They live in front of my camera, but we journey together”
During a session, the artist follows one rule: “Build everything to deconstruct.” It’s an “unknown adventure,” an eternal beginning.
In her studio, in an apartment… Bettina Rheims lets her imagination run free to sublimate the femininity of the model. The women pose in this imagined setting, in a suggestive and scripted manner. This is just the beginning: “Everything is perfect but there’s nothing.”
This is where the magic happens: the artist searches for the detail to achieve a result, she changes the background, adds red to the lips, places pasta in a dish… With her team, she undertakes a true work of staging. “We don’t always have photos, when it happens it’s a miracle,” explains the artist.
And then… “someone lets something go. They live in front of my camera, but we journey together. It takes just a gesture, a movement, or a word.”
Bettina Rheims and Her Models: A Work of Trust
How do you get there? She has already been told that she photographs “like a man.” However, Bettina Rheims disagrees. She believes that on the contrary, it is this “intimate” woman-to-woman relationship that has allowed her to achieve the result she wanted: “They gave me incredible things because they trusted me.”
While capturing these moments of life, she experiences a “brief love story of a few hours.” Through her camera, Bettina seems to know her models by heart: “They are my alter-ego. I understand them and they help me better understand myself.”
Exhibition “Why Did You Abandon Me?” to discover at the Museum of Photography in Nice until September 29.
