A beauty, her head tilted back, eyes nearly closed, peers through a half-opened car window. The window is flecked with raindrops. The woman's face is split by the window -half clear, half misty -creating a sharp relief against the black background. This is Klara Beck's interpretation of the connection between women and water.

Klara Beck, 27, is the second French female photographer to show her work in Shanghai this summer. Following Bettina Rheims, at the invitation of the Alliance Francaise de Shanghai, Beck brings "Portraits Croises" to Shanghai. She plans to stay there for three months, seeking inspiration.

Like Rheims, Beck focuses on women and their bodies. Unlike Rheims, she centers more on the maternal side of a woman's world.

"I love beauty," says Beck. "Beauty is an idea, not reality. My work seeks to illustrate different conceptions of reality."

Born in Strasbourg, France, Beck embarked on photography when she received a camera as a Christmas gift at the age of 17. What started as a hobby later became a career as a photo journalist, making occasional forays into fashion and advertisement.

Beck's commercial portfolio is impressive: catalogue work for Pierre Cardin, Mephisto, the French Ministry of Agriculture and Marie magazine.

Her study of archaeology helped define her style and orientation: women and maternity, and the "rapport between bodies."

Water is another of Beck's obsession, flowing through all her images.

"Water, for me, is mystical, vital, connected with the beginning of almost everything. It changes with the shape of its containers," she explains. "I have a series of pictures, in which women go into the water and become mermaids. Just like water, women are ephemeral. One second she is a devil, the next she might be an angel. She can be mother, child, making food, going to work. She is an emotional volcano. Scream. Cry. Laugh." Beck is currently preparing for a water-themed joint exhibition in Paris next year.

The photographer, who studied Chinese for two years, is a confirmed Sinophile.

"I always thought that it would be wonderful to be brought up in a country with a long history like China. They've got the past behind them. The past pushes them forward and gives them strength," she says. "Actually I don't have a very clear image of China. I'd love to travel around the country and see if some-thing would come out and capture my lens.

"I'd really like to work on a project involving the 'one-child policy' to capture the special things about the only child and their family relations."

"Portraits Croises" is an exhibition of the different categories of Beck's work over the past few years. Her portraits focus on artists, musicians, painters, models, and even farmers and winemakers in the countryside. Beck calls it a "memoir of her past works."

"Life moves on and rolls ahead. The picture freezes a specific moment. What we, photographers, get is that second of someone's life. But looking at the picture, you can somehow figure out all the life before and all the life after, the whole continuum," she says.

Time: through June 28

Venue: 6/F, L'Alliance Francaise de Shanghai, 297 Wusong Rd. Shanghai

Tel: (8621) 6357-5388

(eastday.com June 05, 2002)