Book: Hellen van Meene New Work

cover of 'Hellen van Meene: New Work' (2006) A new book by Hellen van Meene is out now. It is published by Schirmer/Mosel (ISBN 3829602642 / ISBN-13 978-3829602648) on the occasion of the exhibition Hellen van Meene New Work at Huis Marseille Amsterdam and Museum Folkwang Essen.

Update: The book is now also available in the USA, including Amazon.com.

The 41 photographs that make up the book were taken over a period of four years, particularly on travels to England, Latvia, Russia and Japan.

For more about this book please go to its page in the library section.

It's for sale at Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.co.jp, Publishedart.com.au, Photoeye.com, directly from Schirmer/Mosel and many other places.

Hellen van Meene news

Group exhibition: Courtesy Hans Kemna

De Hallen Haarlem
Grote Markt 16, Haarlem, NL
15 march 2008 – 8 june 2008

A selection from the photography collection of Hans Kemna. Over the last 20 years, Kemna, the doyen of Dutch film and theatre casting, has built up a collection of contemporary photography that focuses on ‘humanity’ in its many guises. Besides works by well-known Dutch photographers like Céline van Balen, Koos Breukel and Hellen van Meene, the exhibition also includes photographs by international stars like Wolfgang Tillmans. Beauty and sexuality form key themes – both in Kemna’s collection as a whole and in the present presentation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog of photos by WassinkLundgren that document the Kemna collection as it hangs in his living room in Amsterdam.

Group exhibition: Van Zoetendaal Collections

The Hague Museum of Photography
Stadhouderslaan 43, The Hague, NL
22 March 2008 - 22 June 2008

In 2006 the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag acquired a major collection of photographs compiled by Amsterdam gallery owner and publisher Willem van Zoetendaal. The collections' more than 1000 items include not only early and previously unknown work by modern photographers of the calibre of Rineke Dijkstra, Koos Breukel, Blommers & Schumm, Hellen van Meene and Paul Kooiker, but also historic photographs taken by figures like Cas Oorthuys and George H. Breitner. In addition, the Van Zoetendaal Collection includes hundreds of pictures classifiable as ‘vernacular photography’: usually anonymous amateur shots and portraits taken by small local photographic studios like those of Gyula Kardos in Hungary, Georg Eckert in the former GDR and To Sang in the formerly working class and bohemian De Pijp area of Amsterdam. A wide selection of pictures from the collection will be on show.

Willem van Zoetendaal (1950) began his career as art director on a leading Dutch newspaper: the NRC Handelsblad. In 1991 he was appointed head of the Photography Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In November 2007 he closed his gallery on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam.

More information.

Group exhibition: 'Viva Lolita' - Curated by James Putnam

Maddox Arts
52 Brook's Mews, London W1K 4ED, UK
14 March 2008 – 25th April 2008

For this exhibition James Putnam has been "looking for [..] images that best convey the notion of fading innocence and emerging sexuality in young teenage girls - or rather this sense of duality, the two diametrically opposed states of innocence and sexuality that make these images so ambiguous yet appealing."

Putnam ("a very good curator" and "someone very interesting" - Sadie Coles) is also the author of many books, including Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium but also amazing books like The Ancient Egypt Pop-up Book!

More information (including the complete text from the press release) here.

Benefit Auction: Celebrating 15 years of Blind Spot

Hosted by David Zwirner
533 West 19th Street NYC 10011, USA
Thursday, April 10 2008
Auction Preview from April 8-10, 10am-6pm

Hellen van Meene has donated a work to this benefit auction hosted by David Zwirner. All proceeds will benefit Blind Spot Magazine, the magazine for photography-based fine art. A portfolio of Hellen van published in issue 19.

The inaugural benefit auction held in April 2006 at Phillips de Pury & Company was a great success, with 750 people in attendance and all 50+ lots sold. The proceeds generated provide much-needed operating funds and support for the magazine.

The 89 lots of work by artists from the last 15 years of Blind Spot include Robert Adams, Roger Ballen, Katy Grannan, Teun Hocks, Esko Männikkö, Vik Muniz, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth and Brian Ulrich.

Solo exhibition: I M Art, Soeul, South Korea

I M Art Gallery
2F, 651-8 Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea (map)
6 March 2008 - 26 June 2008

I M ART presents the first solo exhibition of Dutch woman photographer Hellen van Meene. The opening reception is Thurday 6 March at 5pm.

Check out the Flickr photoset for photos of Hellen sightseeing & installing, and of some of the 30+ magazines that have written about this exhibition.

Group exhibition: John Everett Millais / Me, Ophelia

Van Gogh Museum
Paulus Potterstraat 7, Amsterdam, Netherlands
15 February 2008 - 18 May 2008

John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was the foremost painter of the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Britain's most successful artist of the latter half of the 19th century. The exhibition, organised in collaboration with Tate Britain in London, comprises some 100 works and is the first monograph review since 1967 and the first exhibition since 1898 to cover all aspects of Millais' career.

Concurrently on show will be "Me, Ophelia", a selection of photographs by, amongst others, Rineke Dijkstra, Hellen van Meene and Inez van Lamsweerde. These works of contemporary photography display striking parallels with Millais' oeuvre and illustrate how the influence of Millais' famous Ophelia and other paintings still lingers on.

Theatre performance: Spring

Friday nights during the John Everett Millais exhibition (15 February - 18 May) will feature the theatre performance "Spring" by director Olivier Provily. View the digital flyer (in Dutch, PDF, 569 KB). There's also more info in English. Hellen van Meene was asked to create the image used to promote the performance.

Note from the webmaster: I have seen this performance and please be warned that Provily has been criticised for "idiosyncratic exercises" in what can be done with "concepts like slowness and silence".

Group exhibition: In Repose

Goldie Paley Gallery / The Galleries at Moore
Philadelphia, USA
January 26 - March 14, 2008

"In Repose" is drawn from the collection of Dennis and Debra Scholl and features women artists whose works in photography, video, sculpture and sound boldly explore femininity, identity, and sexuality. The exhibition includes historic figures such as Janine Antoni, Carolee Schneeman and Cindy Sherman whose photography, film and performance work from the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s represent the historical context for much of the work in the exhibition as well as works by a current generation of artists such as Tanyth Berkeley, Rineke Dijkstra, Katy Grannan, Naomi Fisher, Anna Gaskell, Catherine Opie, Pipilotti Rist, Meredyth Sparks, Hellen Van Meene, and Bettina Von Zwehl who use such traditional genres as self-portraiture, portraiture, and landscape to probe notions of female identity and the uncertain territory between adolescence and adulthood. The exhibition is accompanied by a tabloid publication.

The Scholls' collection, or at least works culled from it that are on view in Moore's Goldie Paley Gallery, comprises primarily photographic images, largely staged, of women who appear troubled, exposed, caught in dicey situations, or all three. (The Scholls' reaction when told their collection suggested a theme, which they reveal in the catalog's foreword, is fascinating: "We were dumbfounded when one curator described a main thread of the collection as 'women in peril' - we had never considered that concept when acquiring works.")

One such photo could be Helen van Meene's late-'90s image of a pensive young woman nude to the waist, her forearms and lower torso encircled (bound?) by a lacy skirt.

From a review by Edith Newhall.

Event: Aperture's Dutch Artists Reception and One-Day Exhibition

Witzenhausen Gallery
Elandsstraat 145, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Thursday, November 29, 2007
8:00 p.m.

Witzenhausen Gallery in Amsterdam is host to an evening honoring Aperture's Dutch artists. Hans Eijkelboom, Teun Hocks, Hellen van Meene, Erwin Olaf, and Bert Teunissen will each have a selection of their work on display as well as their respective books, published by Aperture.

See photos of the event here.

News: World Photographic Academy

Hellen van Meene is honoured to have been invited to become a member of the World Photographic Academy, whose members include Elliott Erwitt, Mary-Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Boris Mikhailov, Martin Parr, Rankin, Tom Stoddart and many more of the "world's leading photographers, gallery owners, major picture editors, photographic foundation directors and other industry experts". These members will form the judging panel for the World Photography Awards in Cannes, April 2008.

Exhibition: Solo in Seoul

  • Hellen van Meene will have a solo exhibition at I M ART gallery in Seoul, South Korea from March 6 - April 26 of 2008.

Group exhibition: Inside-Out - Photos from Amsterdam Collections and Archives

Foam - Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Netherlands
September 28 - December 5

The city of Amsterdam contains within its perimeters a treasure of high quality photography. Much of this photographic wealth can be found in various leading collections and archives, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Stadsarchief Amsterdam and Maria Austria Instituut. Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam has compiled an exhibition showing work from the holdings of all four of these institutions.

Although there are major differences in the origins, composition and aims of these collections and archives, there is also an obvious similarity. In much of the work the subject is people: people of all shapes and sizes. Dress, expression and pose are key elements that form the basis for our judgment and assessment of people. The often complex relationship between external characteristics and a person’s (desired) identity was the theme for the compilation of Inside Out. The show includes work by Johan van der Keuken, Ed van der Elsken, Cor Jaring, Koos Breukel, Bertien van Maanen, Rineke Dijkstra, Hellen van Meene and Celine van Balen. (source)

More in the press release.

Video: Amadelia Interview

Hellen van Meene interviewed (in English) by Christian E. Klinger for videoblog Amadelia.

The 13:09 minute video starts with a silent 1:06 minute slideshow. The interview as Flash video and a short essay by Klinger are here. There's also a Quicktime version.

There is no theory with which they could be described, but poetry. Hellen van Meene's photographs are a poem.

Solo exhibition: Hellen van Meene

Fotografins Hus
Slupskjulsvägen 26A, Stockholm, Sweden
September 7 - October 28 2007

The exhibition previously shown in Essen and Berlin travels to Stockholm.


For the past seven years, Hellen van Meene has been producing intimate portraits of adolescents. Though the introspective gaze of her models suggest that these are spontaneous, private moments in the lives of her subjects, the carefully considered natural light, lush textures, and striking compositions betray van Meene’s hand in choreographing each image down to the finest detail. The picturesque qualities are undercut by a disquieting tension; the models’ clothes are ill-fitting or inside-out; one girl is asked to lie in a cold bath, fully clothed; another models a fresh bruise. This intimate collaboration between the photographer and her models simultaneously exposes the uncertain nature of adolescent identities and the complicated act of capturing them on film.

Hellen was interviewed by Swedish national television. It was broadcast on 2007-09-07. The interview is in English with Swedish subtitles.

Flickfotograf med hjärna - vi har träffat holländska fotografen Hellen van Meene

Weblogs: The Homan family

Last May and June Hellen van Meene travelled through the South of the US to make new work. Kalypso Homan from New Orleans has blogged about her experience of being photographed and her father Michael uploaded photos of the two sessions to Flickr (first starts here and the second here).

Group exhibition: Local, El fin de la globalización
(Local, The End of Globalisation)

PHotoEspaña 2007
Consejería de Cultura y Deportes. Sala Canal de Isabel II, Madrid, Spain
June 5 - September 2 2007

This exhibition curated by Paul Wombell features the work of Hans Aarsman, Shelby Lee Adams, Boris Mikhailov, Hashem el Madani, Tom Hunter, Jem Southam, Xavier Ribas, LI Tianbing, Hellen van Meene, Massimo Vitali and Karl Heinz Weinberger.

Hellen van Meene shows works from the Barbara Series. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in Spanish and English, with a text by Paul Wombell (ISBN 978-84-451-3000-1).

Read more

Review: C|O Berlin

An interview-based article (German, PDF, 159 KB) from the Berliner Morgenpost (May 13 2007).

Da wird van Meene zum Sammler. Fängt intuitiv mit der Kamera ein, was sie nicht wieder hergeben will: ein Stück Verletzlichkeit, fragile Coolness oder einen üppigen Rest Kindlichkeit. Von ihren besten Fotografien schließlich geht dasselbe Strahlen aus, wie es die alten, gemalten Porträts besitzen.

Solo exhibition: Hellen van Meene - Portraits

C|O Berlin
Postfuhramt, Oranienburger Str. / Tucholskystr., 10117 Berlin, Germany
May 10 - July 8 2007

The exhibition previously shown at Museum Folkwang travels to Berlin.

Puberty is a limbo - a state of physical and emotional transition, an uncertain place between melancholy and hope, fear of loss and excitement about the new, surrendering one's identity and defining oneself anew. Hellen van Meene's portraits of adolescents are multi-layered visual metaphors for that in-between period during which childhood is being left behind. With carefully-staged poses taken in soft light with gentle colouring, van Meene explores the boundary between the world of childish fantasy and adult life. The careful observation and intuitive understanding that these photographs display make them unique psychograms, and, with their technically-perfect realisation, photographic masterpieces.

The opening is on May 9.

Group exhibition: Family Pictures

Guggenheim Museum
New York, USA
February 9 - April 16 2007

Featuring works drawn from the Guggenheim museum's permanent collection, Family Pictures explores the representation of families and children in contemporary photography and video.

Family Pictures includes both documentary-style and more clearly staged or manipulated work by 16 artists: Janine Antoni, Patty Chang, Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Nathalie Djurberg, Anna Gaskell, Nan Goldin, Loretta Lux, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tracey Moffatt, Catherine Opie, Collier Schorr, Thomas Struth, Hellen van Meene, and Gillian Wearing. A version of this exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue, was presented at the Galleria Gottardo in Lugano, Switzerland in 2005; in New York, Family Pictures includes additional artists and recent acquisitions.

News round-up: Reviews of Hellen's exhibition in New York

  • Martha Schwendener for The New York Times (pdf mirror):

    As always, Ms. van Meene exaggerates what nature has already bestowed, dressing butch girls and femme boys in clothes that further mask their sex or posing teenage mothers with their midriffs bared to reveal distended bellies and stretch marks. Other photographs depict dreamy and dazed adolescents staring into points beyond the picture frame.

    There are obvious touchstones for this work: Diane Arbus and Rineke Dijkstra. Like Ms. Dijkstra, Ms. van Meene focuses on teenagers, often at the margins of Europe. Human vulnerability and the plucky dignity summoned by people of all ages to compensate for their limitations are mainstays in Arbus. Formally, Ms. van Meene splits the difference, printing her work in color but at what is, by contemporary standards, rather small scale.

  • Sarah Valdez for Time Out New York:
    If the show has a theme, it might be diversity; at times the photos seem to be playing a game of compare and contrast. [..] Van Meene adopts a pimples-and-all approach that nonetheless presents each of these young people as gorgeous in his or her own right. There is no apparent political motivation underlying this globe-trotting project, but by casting her eclectic subjects - even those who are wall-eyed, weak-chinned or have outie belly buttons - as sensations unto themselves, the artist discards conventional ideals of beauty while making pointedly beautiful work.

Interview

  • David Toyne interviews Hellen Van Meene for ePHOTOzine.
    I think to have a limitation like only twelve shots and no preview is good. It's like having too many choices. You have eight pastries in front of you so you don´t know what to choose anymore, but with three pastries it´s easier. You would think with digital it´s better, but I feel it's the opposite. Less is better. Of course I'll not say digital cannot be good in some ways, but I think for starting out, new photographers should have the feeling of not being sure."

Solo exhibition: Hellen van Meene - Polaroids

Van Zoetendaal Gallery
Keizersgracht 488, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
February 24 - March 31 2007

Hellen van Meene shows a selection of 40 polaroids at Van Zoetendaal Gallery which she produced since 1996 when she started her career as an artist. Before Van Meene starts photographing her models with the Rolleiflex she uses a Polaroid camera to research light, composition and characteristic qualities of her models. Precious unpretentious images. Beloved by the artist and not for sale.

Read more

Solo exhibition: Hellen van Meene

Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, NYC 10011, NY, USA
February 2 - March 17 2007

Reception for the artist: Thursday, February 1st 6-8 p.m.

The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new photographs by Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene. Known for her intimate, intense portraits of adolescent girls and androgynous boys, this is van Meene's first exhibition in the United States since 2001. These recent portraits are primarily the result of travels to Latvia, Russia, London, Japan and Morocco between 2004 and 2006.

Read more

Current and upcoming solo exhibitions

More news can be found in the archive.