Bettina Rheims - Morceaux Choisis - 2002

Morceaux choisis by Bettina Rheims with 21 photographs in a red hardcover slipcase. The red slipcase is undamaged. Steidl edition.

Bettina Rheims (born 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is one of the most internationally influential French photographers. She became known through her provocative, often staged portraits, in which she radically questions female identity, eroticism, androgyny, and gender roles. Her career began in 1978 with series about strippers and acrobats.

Morceaux choisis is not a thematically closed project, but a curated overview of central body of work by Rheims from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. The title (“Selected Pieces”) indicates this: it is a kind of visual condensation of her work. The book shows works from, among others:

- Female Trouble
- Chambre Close
- Modern Lovers / Androgyne series
- Portraits of celebrities and fashion works
- Earlier Acrobatics and Eroticism series

Thus Morceaux choisis is a compilatory work, which makes the main motifs of Rheims particularly comprehensible:

- Staged femininity
- Eroticism and role-playing
- Androgyny and gender boundaries
- Photography between fashion, art, and theatricality

As a studio book with a strong designer’s hand, it serves for many collectors as an “entry work,” but in this early, high-quality Steidl edition it has a special collector’s status.