Bettina Pittaluga: Tenderness as Resistance To Violence
November 7th, 2022
By Clotilde Nogues @noguez__
Equipped with her medium format, Paris-based photographer Bettina Pittaluga uses her analog pictures, to engage our gaze towards otherness with a tender and intimate approach. Fascinated by light and skin, she proposes a poetic and political approach to photography by challenging hate with love.
At first, Bettina didn’t think her work would have a political perspective. She recalls she was just shooting her community, the people she loves and what surrounded her. “My commitment is just here all the time, in my daily life. It’s impossible for me to remain a witness without acting, whether in speech or in physical action,” she says. “I didn't realise at the beginning that you could feel it in my work, because most of the images I was making at the time were simply my community. It was the media that made me notice that my work was engaged. That’s when I started to push the messages, the legends. I became way more alert and demanded to have a control on what is said.”
Bettina shoots mainly women and topics that are related to women. Juggling press commissions, fashion shoots and her own personal projects, she makes sure she works with people who aligns on her values - finding people who are generally rendered invisible by society, or who defend a strong feminist values. “The important thing is to know who you're working with. That's my commitment,” she says, “to make sure the team knows who the models are, make sure the hairdresser knows how to style all types of hair, that the clothes fit all sizes etc. A fashion shoot is not only the photographer, and we must take into account each person on the shoot. I think there is still a lot to do to create better representation in the fashion industry.”
For personal projects Bettina needs a certain intimacy when she’s taking photographs. “This is where I feel most able to express myself, but I don't come looking for it until I'm given it,” she says. “I give the other person the space to express to me how they want to be represented, I spend loads of time chatting with the person first. And then, I never post anything the person doesn’t want me to, I always show them the result and ask their opinion. If it isn’t published, I’m fine with that. It's such an honour and a pleasure for me to take pictures of people that it's not a big deal. The pictures are my interpretation of a moment, it was real, we shared it together. That's the most important thing for me.”
“If it isn’t published, I’m fine with that. It's such an honour and a pleasure for me to take pictures of people that it's not a big deal.”
This intimacy is something that has always been very present in Bettina’s work. She first took up photography when she was a teenager, shooting her best friend or her sister in a way that was very close up and personal. And it would be fair to say she’s always used her photography to discover and explore beauty in general. “Everyone has their own definition of beauty, and that's where I come to express myself: in something quite organic, in the lights, in the expression, in a look, in a gesture,” she says. “The sense of touch particularly is really something that moves me. Everything that’s related to the skin really, its intimacy. The love, the tenderness, the closeness… that’s what fills me and drives me.”
She is always after a special movement, a special look. She may have seen it, a hand movement that she liked and that stayed in her head, but her work isn’t about trying recreate moments with a different person: “it’s really about what the person is ready to show,” she adds.
And all this tenderness, love and intimacy, Bettina uses it to fight or, at least, to resist capitalism and patriarchy. “My main defence against hate is love, it's as simple as that,” she says. “There are so many forms of violence, I mean even violence within a family. Showing tenderness between a mother and her daughter can be seen as a fight against how people expect you to show your subject.”
“Self-acceptance is a big deal for me. I just wish we could get past the prejudices about ageing, body shapes, colours, sexual orientation and identities.”
She adds that this way of thinking works with other types of representation as well; something Bettina has explored in her representation of elderly people, of those with different skins, or people with different bodies. Trying to stick to her definition of beauty, she calls her subjects “natural beauties”. “I think it's difficult for any woman to really be in a deep acceptance of who they are. Women evolve a lot physically, in the sense that we have a lot of things that work on us such as pregnancies or hormones. We constantly have to adapt and readapt to our body and to our skin, and to everything that acts on it,” she says. “And yes, self-acceptance is a big deal for me. I just wish we could get past the prejudices about ageing, body shapes, colours, sexual orientation and identities. In my opinion, representaion through the media is essential. It’s necessary, and yes it’s a fight, because it should already be normalised."
“Sometimes people would see the pictures, and might not think this is their best profile, but they’d be like ‘this is truly me.’ I think that's the best compliment anyone can give me. If you can see yourself in the picture, I've won everything.”
By portraying people as they are, showing their natural beauty and the little things that make them special and unique, Bettina wants people to recognize themselves in her pictures. “That’s when I know I did a good job. Sometimes people would see the pictures, and might not think this is their best profile, but they’d be like ‘this is truly me.’ I think that's the best compliment anyone can give me. If you can see yourself in the picture, I've won everything.”
About Bettina Pittaluga
“I'm a French-Uruguayan photographer, living in Paris. I like to think that I photograph beauty. I find beauty in authenticity ; of an emotion, an instant, the other, in what is most real.
I studied sociology and also worked as a reporter. It's therefore really second nature for me to compose with what is already present and existent. I am focused on giving a voice and visibility to those who are not or too little represented. It is very important to me to do everything to deconstruct this hegemony; I am committed to invoke all these fights until they are won.”