Bettina Rheims

1952 —

Bettina Rheims, the self-described "photographer of the skin," is a French photographer whose often-erotic work came to major prominence during the 1990s. Rheims began her career shooting striptease dancers and acrobats, establishing the female body as her most documented subject. Across her career, Rheims' work has maintained a steady focus on gender, sexuality and rejections of norms, as spotlighted in the series Modern Lovers (1990) and on numerous occasions since. 

Rheims has also worked within fashion, shooting commercial campaigns for Chanel and Lancôme, and taking portraits of Madonna, Charlotte Rampling and Mylène Farmer, among other female icons. In 1995, she documented the French presidential campaign of Jacques Chirac, and upon his election to office was commissioned to shoot his presidential portrait.

Rheims has been twice honoured by the French state, and published countless times, including a career retrospective for Taschen in 2015. She continues to add to a highly eclectic body of work, focused largely on the human body, that skirts the stereotypical and refuses to be categorised.