Chin Chin Wu, Vis a Vis: Portraits of a New Woman

"In 2006, Chin-Chin Wu began photographing a systematic series of intimate portraits in Paris that would later be entitled Vis-à-vis: Portraits of New Women. Originally small-scaled and experimental in nature, by 2008, Wu had evolved the project into its present form of large-format, spectacularly subtle images of female empowerment. Shooting in Paris and Beijing, Wu engaged 50 women from 18 countries as subjects. The women voluntarily posed for their portraits and spoke for the record about their intentions. Dialoguing intimately with the history of photography and its representation of the female genitalia, Vis-à-vis intentionally flirts with ideas of fragility and power, eroticism and raw objectivity, medical precision and sexual primacy, generating an emotional tension that is both uneasy and arresting.