Bettina Rheims

Bettina Caroline Germaine Rheims (born 18 December 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French photographer.

Bettina Rheims was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Her photographic career began in 1978, when she took a series of photos of a group of strip-tease artists and acrobats, which would lead to her first exhibitions. This work would unveil Bettina Rheims' favourite subject, the female model, to which she would frequently return during her career. The 1980s provided Bettina Rheims with the opportunity to take several portraits of both famous and unknown women, resulting in the publication of Female Trouble (1989).

In 1982, the Animal series enabled Rheims' to train her lens on another form of nudity: that of stuffed animals with fixed stares, "which seemed to want to express something beyond death". "I had to capture their gaze" declared the photographer.