An Exhibition of Sensual Authenticity and Feminine Empowerment

Galerie Émilie Dujat (Brussels, Belgium) is delighted to announce the upcoming exhibition by acclaimed feminist photographer Renée Jacobs. FEMMES will be Jacobs' first solo exhibition in Belgium and presents her most extensive collection to date. Featuring over 120 images spanning her illustrious career, FEMMES captures Jacobs' distinctive approach, characterized by unapologetic sensuality and authentic portrayals of women.

In the text accompanying the exhibit, Belgian author, poet and philosopher Véronique Bergen writes: “Sophistication and simplicity, naughty elegance and erotic thirst are woven in a scenography that loves contrasts and echoes between skin, clothes and stone, water. …Renée Jacobs offers us… mental scenes that ricochet on the imagination of those who contemplate them, who feel them. The interior or exterior décor, the recurring motifs (stairs, balustrade, statues...) are eroticized while the fetishization of the hair, body parts, underwear, drapes, textures allow the exploration of a game between revelation and concealment, between showing and stealing in the invisible. The journey of the senses to which Renée Jacobs invites us plunges us into the spray of a dreamlike poetry pulsed by the erotic conflagration.”

About the exhibition, Jacobs states, "I am absolutely thrilled to present this comprehensive and uncensored overview of my work. Émilie's unwavering support for fearless erotic art encapsulates and empowers my vision of replacing terms like 'the male gaze' and 'the female gaze' with 'empowering gaze' and 'disempowering gaze.' Granting women the freedom to express themselves and their sensuality in any manner they choose is a true gift. Too often, society, the media, and the art world impose and perpetuate oppressive and inauthentic portrayals of (and on) women. It is crucial that we reclaim our own narratives."

Renée Jacobs is widely regarded as one of the most influential and revered photographers specializing in the female nude. Her work has been exhibited and published worldwide, including cities such as Bangkok, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Paris, Milan, and Porto. Her photographs have graced the pages of publications like Snoecks, Elle Italia, The British Journal of Photography, Playboy Italia, AnOther Magazine, i-D (in the UK, Japan, France, and Italy), and numerous other magazines. In December 2022, France24 television featured an insightful interview with the artist, along with a detailed review of her work. In addition to her five solo mongraphs, Jacobs' work has been prominently featured in several Taschen anthologies. She serves as the Executive Director of Photos de Femmes, a groundbreaking photo festival dedicated to empowering images of women and girls. Her photography is the visual outgrowth of her activism as a civil rights and Constitutional lawyer in the US for 15 years, where she litigated some of the earliest gay rights cases.

Renée Jacobs is a two-time First Prize winner of the International Photography Award- first in 2008 in the Fine Art/Nude category and again in 2022 for her book POLAROIDS in the Fine Art/Book category. The first editions of her books POLAROIDS and PARIS quickly sold out and were reissued in second editions in 2022. POLAROIDS went to number 1 on the esteemed photo-eye bookstore bestseller list, while PARIS reached number six.

Émilie Dujat is a groundbreaking gallerist who has been championing erotic art since 2006. Born into a family of artists, she has a Degree in Art History and was a lawyer in Paris and New York. Inspired by the freedom of thought of the Enlightenment, she opened ‘La Galerie Libertine’ --a cabinet of erotic curiosities and the first erotic art gallery in Brussels. She contributed to the opening of the Museum of Eroticism and Mythology in Brussels. In 2013, La Galerie Libertine Gallery became La Galerie Émilie Dujat, which continues as a platform for communication of contemporary disruptive art and a gallery specializing in questioning identity, gender and the discovery of human sexual fantasy.