Ceci n'est pas un livre, ceci n'est pas un film...
Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly's Rose, c'est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film on DVD. This extraordinary work of art, in two different but interlocking and complimentary formats, defies easy categorization. For in this multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and artist Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen manipulation, obsession, fetish and seething desire. Equal parts erotica, fashion shoot, art monograph, metaphysical mystery, social and cultural archeaology of the French capital, and neo-noir arthouse movie—Rose, C'est Paris is all of these and more.
In a surrealistic inversion of the oft-imitated 1954 Parisian photobook by Ed van Elsken, Love On The Left Bank, this mesmerising work is the meandering tale of twin sisters, known only as B and R, and a third principal—the city itself. When R returns to their apartment and learns that B has been abducted following a violent struggle, a dreamlike detective story unfolds in black and white on the streets, in the cafés and cabarets, épicieries and musées, usines abondonées, and grands hotels of Paris. But even this notional plot is submerged under layers of echo, reference and homage—to artists like Rene Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Man Ray; to the brilliant amorality of the Fantômas pulp novels of the early 20th century and to various mythical sites and monuments of Paris. What happened to the missing sister? Was there a plot? Was she really kidnapped? Is she alive or dead? Was it murder? Suicide? Or just a nightmare? Or is she now a punk rocker, a prostitute, a cabaret dancer, or possibly even a nun? Did she marry and flee to India? Does R know more than she claims? Or perhaps B has adopted her sister's identity—and it is in fact R who has gone missing... Rheims and Bramly create a series of extraordinary tableaux suggesting all these possibilities and many more. Featuring a host of extraordinary figures, from Naomi Campbell, Monica Belluci, and Michelle Yeoh, to family members, fashion models, porn stars and le pipole of Parisian society, Rose, c'est Paris is both immediately accessible as a delicious visual treat, a refreshingly original work of erotica and a celebration of Paris that sidesteps all the usual clichés. And yet the work remains infinitely mysterious in the way it plays with genre and narrative, allusion and expectation. Like the city itself, it can never be fully defined or explained, only experienced again and again. *Available in a luxurious XL-format limited edition of 1,500 copies, each numbered and signed by Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly. Also available in two Art Editions of 100 copies each, with a signed and numbered silver gelatin print.
About the artists: Serge Bramly is an artist, writer and essayist. He frequently collaborates on artistic and photographic projects with his former wife Bettina Rheims, with whom he has a son, Virgile. His novel La Terreur dans le boudoir (1994) was adapted by Benoît Jacquot for the movie Sade. His nonfiction books include Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci (1991) Leonardo: The Artist and the Man (1995), and Mona Lisa: The Enigma (2005). Inspired by her passion for art and female portraiture, the artist Bettina Rheims devoted herself wholly to photography beginning in 1978. In the past three decades she has produced numerous major photographic series, which have been exhibited all over the world. Her books include Female Trouble (1989), Modern Lovers (1990), Chambre Close (1994), I.N.R.I. (1998), X'Mas (2000) Shanghai (2003), Heroines (2007), and The Book of Olga (2008 for TASCHEN). In 2007 she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for her artistic achievement.
