Détenues by Bettina Rheims

Since the Hôtel de Lalande and the former prison are temporarily closed for renovation, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design is presenting the exhibition Détenues (Female Inmates) by Bettina Rheims at the Mably Chapter House. 

Encouraged by Robert Badinter, to whom we dedicate this exhibition, photographer Bettina Rheims created, between September and November 2014, Détenues, a series of portraits of women incarcerated in four French prisons, compiled in a book published by Gallimard. 

This project, supported by the prison system, brings the world of incarceration into contact with that of artistic creation; through a complex dialogue, it explores the construction and representation of femininity in spaces of deprivation of liberty and confinement. 

“I needed to meet women who hadn’t chosen to live within four walls. We talked a lot. They shared their stories, and I tried to give them a moment outside of that time.” 

Bettina Rheims 

The Series Détenues offers a window into the sensitive and little-known world of incarceration. These women, photographed in prison in a makeshift studio, were able to work with the photographer to rebuild their feminine identity and begin the process of restoring their self-image. To these women, whose lives were turned upside down overnight, Bettina Rheims restores, if only for the duration of a photograph, their dignity and humanity. She restores to each of them the personality that incarceration tends to erase.

↘︎ Production: Initiated by the Bordeaux Court of Appeals, with the support of Élisabeth Wilmers’s philanthropy and the participation of the Gironde Departmental Council for Access to the Law, this exhibition is presented in partnership with the Institut pour la photographie.

↘︎ Publication: This work was the subject of a book,  published in 2018 in the prestigious Blanche collection—in large format—by Gallimard, which brings together more than sixty portraits  accompanied by a foreword by Robert Badinter and an essay by Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen. 
It will be available for purchase at the Machine à Lire bookstore during the opening reception on April 10 and the event on April 11 in Mably.