Dior Talks is an ongoing series of compelling weekly podcasts that explore the House’s position at the intersection of art, culture and society. Featuring a rotating lineup of specialized hosts, each series examines a particular theme, with topics as varying as feminist art, styling and the environment, as well as informative discussions on the heritage of the House itself.
Both Maria Grazia Chiuri and Kim Jones, since their respective arrivals, have produced collections that ask big questions, notably for their regular collaborations with surprising spectrum of artists, performers, writers and intellectuals. Dior Talks continues this level of interactive dialogue with a diverse range of guests discussing their careers and their interactions with the house of Dior.
The latest in the Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze,’Bettina Rheims, a major figure in the world of portrait photography, discusses her remarkable forty-year career.
In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with one of the legendary figures of photography in the last half century. Bettina Rheims has been prominent and highly prolific in the world of portraiture, and also fashion photography, for four decades, having first picked up a camera in 1978. She started by photographing a group of female striptease artists and became fascinated by capturing the femininity, power and corporeality of womanhood. This is a fascination which she has maintained ever since in a long and varied career.
In 2017, Bettina Rheims shot a series for Dior Magazine showcasing the spellbinding aura of Laetitia Casta. For the past forty years, the French photographer has interpreted and celebrated femininity in all its forms. The art of image-making has allowed her to explore notions of gender and question stereotypes, from celebrity portraits and capturing subjects representing androgynous and transsexual beauty to her latest project, entitled Détenues, which reveals the daily lives of female prisoners. In an interview for Dior by the journalist Charlotte Jansen, the audacious artist looks back on how she reinvents and transcends codes and conventions to better celebrate the plurality of feminine identities.
