Rheims: Heroines

The 23 portraits of women of this series, realized in 2005 and exhibited at the gallery in 2006, are those of 23 women with an off-beat beauty, photographed in a very sober setting, almost monochromatic grey, with a stone/base as only relief; a stone with which the models had to compose on the artist’s demand: “it is your stone, it is all what is left to you in the world…”

This new series marks the accomplishment of Bettina Rheims’ deep desire to establish a link with sculpture in its photographic creation, translating the idea that “one could see the back of the people that one sees facing”; like if suddenly the portrayed models were visualized in 3D.

Being raised among works of art, the artist was stunned by the look at antique marbles, of Michelangelo’s Slaves in the Offices Gallery in Florence, by Rodin’s bronzes, wherein bodies seem to burst out of the stone, a gush that she intended to transcribe in this series of photos.

Bilingual French & English text by Catherine Millet, chief editor of the magazine Art Press, and author of the book La vie sexuelle de Catherine M. (The sexual life of Catherine M.), who has introduced a new and very different form of erotic writing.