BIOGRAPHY

Renée Jacobs is one of the most celebrated photographers of the female nude of our time. Recipient of the prestigious International Photography Award for Fine Art Nude, her work has been exhibited and published around the world.

Monographs of her work include Werkdruck (2012/Editions Galerie Vevais, edited and with an introduction by Jock Sturges); Renée Jacobs' PARIS (2013/Editions Galerie Vevais) and Rêves de Femmes (2014/Editions Bessard). Her book POLAROIDS first and second edition were released in 2022 and 2023 with Editions Galerie Vevais as well as the second edition of PARIS in 2022. Renée Jacobs: In Italy was published with Dumas·Salchli Editions in 2025. Dreams from America published with Galerie Les Yeux Ouverts will be released mid-2026.

Magazines that have featured Renée's work include Vanity Fair France, Elle Italia, L’Oeil de la Photographie, Playboy Italia, Silvershotz, Adore Noir, PH Magazine, Fine Art Photo, Nude Magazine, Photoicon, French Photo, B&W Magazine, Focus, Discarded Magazine, FHM Turkey and numerous others. She has been featured in numerous anthologies, such as Taschen's Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography.

Renée's early photojournalism included assignments for The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and many other newspapers and magazines.  She received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Disadvantaged and her work is in the permanent collection of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.  Her first book, Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania was originally published in 1986 and re-issued in 2010 to favorable reviews in The New York Times Review of Books and photo-eye.  After a 15 year detour as a civil rights lawyer, Renée returned to photography. 

BOOKS BY RENÉE JACOBS

DREAMS FROM AMERICA 2026 – JUST RELEASED!!!

Galerie Les Yeux Ouverts (Fontainebleau) is proud to announce a new photography book from celebrated photographer Renée Jacobs. “Dreams from America” is Jacobs’ biggest collection to date and is composed of 308 images taken mostly during the photographers’ years living in California from 2006-2016. 

The book is available in a Deluxe Edition for 75€ and includes one unique, signed 4”x6” print from each of the 308 images in the book.  The Limited Edition for 30€ is available without a print.   The total edition is 600 and includes an introduction by Brigitte Ollier and a text by Bernard Plossu.  Editor: Wendy Hicks. Order Dreams from America at: a.desachy@icloud.com

Why photograph nudes?
“Because they have always been beautiful, and one summer morning, it pleased me.”
Études de nu, Paris, 1930.

This quote from Germaine Krull (1897-1985), a committed witness of the thirties, is a good introduction to the work of Renée Jacobs

Her nudes are like pearly clouds that appear and then fade into the sky, naturally, like secret messages. With each nude, Renée Jacobs invents her freedom, reveals her desires, and claims her sexuality. One can also read in the subtext an intimate history of her photography that joins the daring women of the Belle Époque, Kiki de Montparnasse and other vagabonds ready to outwit the lensl

--Brigitte Ollier From the introduction of Dreams from America

RENÉE JACOBS' IN ITALY

dumas.salchli editions (Arles, France) 2025. Text by  Véronique Bergen (French/English), 32 pages, silkscreen cover, 250 numbered copies and 20 copies not for sale. Each zine contains an original 10x15cm photograph signed by Renée Jacobs. To order please send an email to wendy@reneejacobs.com

Sophistication and simplicity, naughty elegance and erotic thirst are woven together in a scenography devoted to the contrasts and echoes between skin, clothes and stone or water ... The journey of the senses to which Renée Jacobs invites us makes us plunge into the spray of dreamlike poetry, pulsed by an erotic fire. 

--Véronique Bergen, From the Introduction to “In Italy” 

RENÉE JACOBS' PARIS

Edition Galerie Vevais, Berlin. Editor: Alexander Scholz. Introduction: Prof. John Wood. First Edition 2013 Special Softcover with a dustjacket, B/W pictures, printed with 4 colors, 150 pages, 24 x 30 cm.  Second Edition 2021 with some new pictures. Softcover with a mounted picture on the cover. B/W pictures, printed with 4 colors. Approx. 140 pages, 17 x 24 cm. Limited to only 500 signed and numbered copies. To order email wendy@reneejacobs.com

“This is a book about Paris, about passion, and about pleasure.  Jacobs’ depiction of femininity is both an ancient and a modern one, of women as free spirit – as free as any man.  Like Romaine Brooks, Jacobs presents formal elegance, desire, and beauty all coupled within the allure of sexual magic.  The joy sings through Jacobs’ lens.”
--Professor John Wood, from the Introduction to RENÉE JACOBS' PARIS.

RÊVES DE FEMMES

Editions Bessard, Paris.  Zine Collection 18 ” Reves de Femmes ” by the artist Renée Jacobs. A limited edition of 250 copies with a signed C print by the artist on Kodak Paper. Publication date: august 2014. To order email: wendy@reneejacobs.com

"Renée Jacobs' work is the result of a very personal vision and interpretation of women. The female form is her intimate sketchpad.  Life is a dream and Renée treats us to exquisite images that are a magical feast for the eyes of the beholder….[With her work, you] are walking past an open door and witnessing beauty ... Apparitions and fantasies, their story is left to our imagination . . . Leafing through the pages, you become a voyeur; you experience a guilty pleasure, un léger frisson, catching a glimpse of forbidden private moments." 
--Douglas & Françoise Kirkland, from the Introduction to Rêves de Femmes

WERKDRUCK No. 4

Galerie Vevais, Berlin. Editor: Jock Sturges. Book with 20 original photographs, printed on
baryta paper. Limited to 300 signed and numbered copies. Every WERKDRUCK is
carefully printed and bound by hand, finally signed and numbered by the artist. Please allow production time for delivery. To order email info@galerievevais.de

“Renée’s pictures have a combination of intensity and honesty that I don’t often encounter… She’s making the pictures because she wants to keep them fixed in her head and heart for all time.  Her models trust her to tell the truth about them.  And she does . . . The truth is of course half hers, a half that is rich in admiration, and affection.  For their part, the models are licensed in the moment to be – without limit or constraint.  I feel distinctly privileged to present this work to you as a singular example of what can be achieved in the photographic medium…"
-Jock Sturges, from the introduction to WERKDRUCK