CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/29/2015

Hellen van Meene: The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits

Hellen van Meene's photographs are "formally inventive," Martin Barnes writes, "made with an awareness of how a three-dimensional figure and environment can be artfully sculpted by the photographer into the two-dimensional space of a photographic surface. Each photograph resounds with painterly color harmonies. She has a lucid understanding of the nuances of natural light: how it can transform a scene before the lens into a picture that distills and then transcends the depiction of reality. Coupling this with her choreographed scenes and her intuitive use of gesture in the faces and attitudes enacted by her subjects, she has consistently produced the condition for photographic transformations. Van Meene's images are based in reality but are often puzzlingly detached, sometimes spectral, seeming to float a little above the earth. Describing her process of working, she has said, 'I sometimes feel like a magician.'" Featured image is "Untitled, Tokyo" (2000).