Emerging from a turret of soft white fleece, Rheim’s model’s gaze fixes the viewer with a candid yet mysterious look, stirring an ambience of a storybook world with hidden depths in the poster version of the work “Portrait de Daria au vision blanc, 2”. As a portraitist Rheims works with her sitters to conjure an identity and feeling the subject wishes to project.

Bettina Rheims is a French artist, photographer, and director celebrated for her distinctive fashion photography and the more personal work that grew out of that pursuit. Deploying portraiture, her subjects are usually women, often with an element of performance or self-elaboration. Her 2014 publication, Gender Studies, investigated themes of gender compliance and rejection – a further elaboration on the theme of self recreation so central to Rheims’s focus.

I’ll Be Your Mirror was the title of Fotografiska, Stockholm’s 2016 exhibition showcasing the work of renowned French photographer Bettina Rheims. Having begun her career as a photographic model who became a fashion photographer, Rheims’s practice evolved into portrait photography of a broader, more investigative character. Working closely with her subjects the photographer conjures elaborately refined identities for her sitters, addressing the imaginary fictionalized realm the camera can create.

Size: 19.69"W x 27.56"H (50x70 cm)

Printed on 170g FSC-certified paper.