Bettina Rheims - Heroines - 2007

Large format edition!

The skin of women who have been scratched, mistreated and loved - loved too much. Women who are very real. The cold, artificial light of a studio, like the light that bathed the artists' studios of the nineteenth century. In the center is a big rock made of papier-mache, at once base, pedestal and sculptor's stool. Haute couture dresses that have been torn, abused and recomposed - tragic and sublime, just like the Heroines who wear them.
By playing on these four elements. Bettina Rheims transcends portrait, fashion and nude photography and touches on something more secret and intimate - something painful, amorous and captivating that comes more from the soul than from the body. Like in the paintings of Egon Schiele or Lucian Freud.
Whether actresses like Milla Jovovich, models like Laetitia Casta or dancers like Blanca Li, whether they embody the vigor of youth or the richness of experience, all the women photographed by Rheims for this new series reveal something of their soul in a way they have never done before. They are radiant with a kind of inner beauty so fascinating that it makes us want to study each square inch of their image with a magnifying glass, just as we would hang on every word of an eventful and deeply moving story.