Bettina Rheims

One of France’s most celebrated photographers, Bettina Rheims has captured images of women—nude and clothed—strip-tease artists, and performers, and taken portraits of actors and celebrities for magazines such as Elle and Paris Match. Her series “Modern Lovers” (1989–91) features androgynous adolescents, while in the controversial series “INRI” (1999), she pictured scenes from the life of Christ. More recently, a powerful Russian oligarch, Sergey Rodionova, commissioned Rheims to photograph his glamorous, jet-set wife, Olga. That led to a second collaboration between the two and the production of a book of explicit images of Olga, which explores ideas of female sexuality. Rheims also took the official portrait photograph of the former French president, Jacques Chirac, in 1995.