Female Trouble

Bettina Rheims has been one of the most acclaimed woman photographers of France since the early 80s, when she first showed her sensational female nudes and portraits. Film stars, actresses and artists, models, friends, country fair acrobats and strippers— known and unknown women have posed in front of her lens during the past twenty years. Female Trouble, first published in 1989 by Schirmer/Mosel, presents a selection of some one hundred photographs—brilliant studies on womankind mostly in black and white, her favored technique mastered with a unique subtlety. The common denominator of this collection of photographs is Rheims’ sensitive and delicate relation with her sitters, revealing an extraordinary originality, empathy, sense of style and feeling for both the manifold facets of femininity and pictorial eroticism. The plates are preceded by an introductory essay by Catherine Deneuve.