CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/30/2015

Hellen van Meene: The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits

Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene "has described how the images she envisages exert a forceful, physical pull on her to make them," Victoria and Albert Museum senior photography curator Martin Barnes writes in Aperture's new release, The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits. "'If I can't make it, I get sick; if I can't make the photos, I can't breathe.' The dynamic between the model and photographer alone is not enough to complete an understanding of these images, which take a deliberately performative stance. Our role as spectators is the missing third element in their reading. Whether consciously calculated or not, Van Meene's photographs leave room for us as viewers to interpret their intention. They operate by using and confounding the accepted and culturally assimilated visual codes of various kinds of photographic imagery—from portraiture to pornography and documentary to fashion–and reinterpret these in the arena of fine art." Featured image is "Untitled" (1995).