Bettina Rheims breaks taboo with ‘Olga’: erotic art with psychology
Bettina Rheims’ career kick-started back in 1978, when she took a series of photos of a group of strippers and acrobats, launching herself as a daring new eye in the photography world.
Eroticism traditionally held a male gaze, but Rheims entered into it and her lens didn’t flinch, offering up a new take on intimacy.
Since then, she has braced all the slings and arrows flung her way as she boldly goes where her lens leads her, even if it does attract controversy. Her view, however, was that art is art and if it happens to be bipartisan then so be it.
Before she became one of the most fearless eyes in contemporary photography, Rheims lived many lives: journalist, model, gallery assistant, even muse. But it wasn’t until she turned the lens on Parisian strippers in 1978 that things properly ignited. Her early images were more than ‘erotic’ (for want of a better term), they were confrontational, uncomfortable, and very human. In a scene dominated by the male gaze, Rheims showed women as powerful, complex, and defiantly alive.
“I have always believed that whether the work is my idea or a commission, it is personal work,” she once said. “In the end, as my old master Helmut Newton used to say, there are only two kinds of pictures: the good ones and the bad ones.”
With this mindset, her images have explored the Freudian side of the psyche in a boldly alluring fashion. This takes a defiant sense of artistry and a sense of boldness that has illuminated the way for others. As she once said:
“I think that I first started to shoot naked women because I wanted my father to look at my images and father liked very pretty women.”
Bettina Rheims
There is a wry smile to the frank psychology that comes across in the images depicted in her latest Taschen collection, The Book of Olga.
Commissioned by a Russian oligarch as a gift for his wife, The Book of Olga sounds like softcore vanity fare, but in Rheims’ hands, it’s anything but. Instead, it’s a baroque collection of high-gloss nudity, equal parts Versailles and Lynch. Olga Rodionova is cast as part icon, enigma, and dangerous weapon. And Rheims frames it with her trademark mix of sharp wit and soft light, making the obscene feel almost sacred.
Rheims has spent decades blurring the lines between art and provocation. Her work has covered trans identities, female criminals, mannequins, sex workers, and socialites – with each subject treated as mythic. She redefined erotic photography as a subgenre we recognise today. While the art world argued over intent, Rheims just kept making the work in a very raw, weird, and beautifully uncompromising way.
The Book of Olga is available to buy here.
The erotic photography of Bettina Rheims in The Book of Olga:
