Approaching Olga: the women behind and in front of the camera
By Catherine Millet. From 'Bettina Rheims, The Book of Olga'
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What struck me at once when I met Olga and her husband was the tranquil selfassurance with which they both went about staging their desire and publishing the images that reveal it
Of course, conditions today are very different from those in the times of the absolute monarchs.Whatever the power afforded by his work and fortune, the citizen of a democratic society is exposed to the gaze and judgement of his fellow citizens. To this must be added the fact that today wives are also mistresses. Our modern conception of marriage and love no longer makes the same distinction between the mother of one's legitimate children and the woman with whom one shares sensual pleasures, which means that to exhibit the latter is also to exhibit the person who officially accompanies you in all the circumstances of social life, and that requires a lot more nerve.What struck me at once when I met Olga and her husband was the tranquil self-assurance with which they both went about staging their desire and publishing the images that reveal it. In their own country they have been attacked and taken to court on the grounds that they supposedly offended the religious beliefs of certain citizens (that reminds me of the problems Bettina Rheims had with conservative Christians over her I.N.R.I. series of photographs). They defended themselves and have continued, and will continue to assert the rights of individual freedom in this sphere.
Besides, it is not as if we were expected to confuse these images with real people.When I asked Olga if she didn't feel embarrassed to appear in these erotic compositions, she told me she didn't, because it was all a game, and the person we see in the photographs is not really her, but a character. This woman who poses in a red waspie, who bestrides a young man on all fours and tears her fishnet tights to reveal a jewel attached to one of her labia, is well endowed with common sense. She knows better than many supposedly level-headed women and men who believe hysterically that they are being robbed of a part of themselves when someone takes a photo, that an image is only an illusion. As to those who think they know something about her person because they have seen her body from top to bottom and back to front, I would ask them to look carefully at the last pages of the book. In the penultimate photo, Olga is naked and stands with her hands behind her back, leaning modestly against a wall, with no artifice other than the mask over her face. As for the last photo, it is Rheims's clever homage to Gustave Courbet: Olga has taken the pose of The Origin of the World: thighs, sex and torso, without the head. These two images are contradictory: the reserved postures of a schoolgirl in one, and the open display of flesh in the other, but in both the body abandons itself precisely when the person dwelling within it absents herself, in collusion with the person making the images. Bettina tells me that as a general rule she can "only work when the other person has desire. It is their desire that elicits mine". How then did she react in the situation that concerns us here, when asked to respond to the desire of two people who, although united in marriage, will always be two distinct individuals? Bettina asked the husband not to attend the photography sessions, but we can imagine the weight of his virtual presence: he was the patron who, as Bettina attests, showed total respect for the artist's freedom and encouraged her to be bold; and he was without a doubt the main spectator to whom the model's poses were addressed. But what was the model thinking of when, whip in hand, her face expressed infinite gentleness? Or when, with a dildo replacing the whip, she seemed to be deep in conversation with her best friend? "We became friends", confides Bettina.
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Page [1] [2] [3]
What struck me at once when I met Olga and her husband was the tranquil selfassurance with which they both went about staging their desire and publishing the images that reveal it
Of course, conditions today are very different from those in the times of the absolute monarchs.Whatever the power afforded by his work and fortune, the citizen of a democratic society is exposed to the gaze and judgement of his fellow citizens. To this must be added the fact that today wives are also mistresses. Our modern conception of marriage and love no longer makes the same distinction between the mother of one's legitimate children and the woman with whom one shares sensual pleasures, which means that to exhibit the latter is also to exhibit the person who officially accompanies you in all the circumstances of social life, and that requires a lot more nerve.What struck me at once when I met Olga and her husband was the tranquil self-assurance with which they both went about staging their desire and publishing the images that reveal it. In their own country they have been attacked and taken to court on the grounds that they supposedly offended the religious beliefs of certain citizens (that reminds me of the problems Bettina Rheims had with conservative Christians over her I.N.R.I. series of photographs). They defended themselves and have continued, and will continue to assert the rights of individual freedom in this sphere.
Besides, it is not as if we were expected to confuse these images with real people.When I asked Olga if she didn't feel embarrassed to appear in these erotic compositions, she told me she didn't, because it was all a game, and the person we see in the photographs is not really her, but a character. This woman who poses in a red waspie, who bestrides a young man on all fours and tears her fishnet tights to reveal a jewel attached to one of her labia, is well endowed with common sense. She knows better than many supposedly level-headed women and men who believe hysterically that they are being robbed of a part of themselves when someone takes a photo, that an image is only an illusion. As to those who think they know something about her person because they have seen her body from top to bottom and back to front, I would ask them to look carefully at the last pages of the book. In the penultimate photo, Olga is naked and stands with her hands behind her back, leaning modestly against a wall, with no artifice other than the mask over her face. As for the last photo, it is Rheims's clever homage to Gustave Courbet: Olga has taken the pose of The Origin of the World: thighs, sex and torso, without the head. These two images are contradictory: the reserved postures of a schoolgirl in one, and the open display of flesh in the other, but in both the body abandons itself precisely when the person dwelling within it absents herself, in collusion with the person making the images. Bettina tells me that as a general rule she can "only work when the other person has desire. It is their desire that elicits mine". How then did she react in the situation that concerns us here, when asked to respond to the desire of two people who, although united in marriage, will always be two distinct individuals? Bettina asked the husband not to attend the photography sessions, but we can imagine the weight of his virtual presence: he was the patron who, as Bettina attests, showed total respect for the artist's freedom and encouraged her to be bold; and he was without a doubt the main spectator to whom the model's poses were addressed. But what was the model thinking of when, whip in hand, her face expressed infinite gentleness? Or when, with a dildo replacing the whip, she seemed to be deep in conversation with her best friend? "We became friends", confides Bettina.
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Bettina Rheims, The Book of Olga
Hardcover + Box, 29.2 x 43.7 cm (11.5 x 17.2 in.), 154 pages
$ 850.00
$ 850.00
French photographer Bettina Rheims's bold, explicit portraits of a Russian femme fatale, commissioned by her millionaire oligarch husband. Limited to 1,000 numbered copies, each signed by Bettina Rheims.
Photos: Bettina Rheims