Milan, two French photographer at Fashion week

Bettina Rheims © Breakfast with Monica Bellucci, November 1995, Paris

Bettina Rheims, Can You Find Happiness?

The exhibition opened at Spazio Forma Milan and was curated by Philippe Dagen. Around a hundred works are on display, from nine different photographic series among them “Chambre Close” and “Shanghai”. Actress, models, singers, and more or less well known women are the protagonist of her work. Meticulously staged in a day-to-day scenes or in close up shots these photographs are displayed in large and imposing, color-saturated prints. "Olga" a new project, with a series of nine large format photographs is on show for the first time.

Lise Sarfati ©

A day earlier accross town we went to the opening of Lise Sarfati at Galleria Carla Sozzani This was the first solo exhibition of the French photographer in Italy with a special selection from The New Life serie (2003) and two most recent series, never shown before: Immaculate and Mother & Daughter (2005-2007).
The small colour prints series are mainly close up portraits of teenage often with minimal choregraphy, subjects in their everyday life. In most of her work the artist explores "the dividing lines between good and bad, happiness and sadness, innocence and perversity, reality and fantasy". In the series Mother & Daughter the central subject comes accross in a more direct way. The photographer is playing with the role of parents and children using wig, mask and make up. With this work "the characters become interchangeable and their relation reinforce the mirror effect. The imaginative realm of the mother is embodied in the daughter and the girl's ideal is played out by her mother." A catalogue, sponsored by Dior, with a retrospective of the artist accompanied the exhibition.
1Quotes from catalogue and press release.