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| © Bettina Rheims |
| Click photo for more behind-the-scenes shots from Bettina Rheims's "Liquid Gold" photo shoot. |
AP: You mentioned thinking about paintings. Your last book, "Heroines," is a collection of portraits of beautiful and famous women seen in a harsh, unforgiving light. They look like paintings…
BR: I got the idea for the book when I was in Vienna. I was having a big retrospective there and had some time to kill. So I went to several museums. Of course I knew Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, but I looked at them in a different way. I looked at Degas's dancers. I always looked at the skin.
AP: And that was your jumping-off point?
BR: In a way, all my projects start with skin. My first question -- even before I start to think about black and white or color or camera format -- is "What kind of skin do I want to represent?" For "Heroines," I shot with a 20x24-inch camera; it was the first time I used that large of a format. I wanted to show raw skin: skin and blood, skin and veins, scars, imperfections. It was not the usual kind of glamorous skin. It wasn't Hollywood skin. It was the skin of pain. The pictures were about women today, about being able to assume your femininity as well as your strength.
AP: And yet the images are very sympathetic to the women. In an interview with American Photo in 1991 you said, "People often come to my studio to scare themselves a little."
BR: I am always sympathetic to my subject -- especially the ones in "Heroines," because I chose women whom I consider icons. It was a very special moment. I was asking these women for a moment of abandon, to give up whoever they were.
AP: Early in your career you shot only in black and white. Now everything is color. How did that change come about?
BR: When I did "Chambre Close," I wanted to do a tribute to all those old, turn-of-the-century pornographic postcards I saw in flea markets in Paris. But I didn't want my pictures to look old-fashioned, so I began using color. But I wanted strong, colorful color. Again, it started with the skin. I wanted the people in the pictures to look like Rodin sculpture. I wanted viewers to feel like they could touch the skin of the models. The funny thing is, today I can't work in black and white. I see the world in color.
AP: Why do you think your work has never become as famous in the United States as in Europe?
BR: Well, I don't have a gallery here, for one thing.
AP: What you do defies easy categorization. It is fictional, and deals with fantasy, like Helmut Newton's work, but it also has elements of documentary work….
BR: I'm proud that I can't be categorized. I think a lot of artists find something and do everything in that way. They are careful not to change, and to make pictures that can be identified instantly. I would be happy to be recognized, who wouldn't? I like it when someone comes up to me and says, ‘I like your work.' But I'm with myself most of the time and I want to be happy with what I am doing.
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