Hellen van Meene

Van Meene's portraits are more often of pubescent girls, clothed in softly coloured tops and dresses. Her subjects’ clothing and gestures as well as the location and lighting are all planned by the artist, despite it seeming unclear how much of the scene is a candid moment of the subject's life captured by the photographer. Van Meene is quoted as saying that she finds beauty in the “unpolished, still evolving” adolescent girls and “the tension between her subjects’ their childlike awkwardness and their near-adult bodies.” Some publications have noted the “innocently erotic” element that is present in these photographs. The sexuality present in these photographs provokes discomfort in the viewer and raises the question of whether the models are aware of their sexuality and the effect it has on the viewer or whether they are unaware of the connotations of the way they have been positioned by the artist.

Several of Van Meene’s works were exhibited as part of the 2019 show “Make Believe” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

For her portraits, she most often approaches girls on the street. She chooses her subject matter by finding girls who" could be said to have ‘imperfect’ faces and 'flaw ed' bodies". She pre-visualizes the portrait but is open to improvisation. The portraits bring out the "inherent grace in their changing faces and bodies." She usually finds the girls in her hometown. She is also trying to capture some of the details of older homes in the area using them as backgrounds.

In 2018, Van Meene was the focus of an exhibit called “And everything goes on when you die” at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. It showed a never before exhibited series of photos from the artist, and its subject matter centered around death, mourning, and renewed vitality.

In 2016, Van Meene was one of the recipients of the Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship, which is awarded to distinguished people within the science or fine art of photography.

In 2010, van Meene began photographing dogs alongside her adolescent subjects. Maintaining the same attention to detail and planning as in her earlier portraits. Van Meene has stated that in this collection, she is less concerned with the sociological message in her work and more interested in curating “light, shape, posture, gaze and general mise-en-scene.” She is also aware of her now-recognizable style and has noted that it is not the girls that make her work unique, but the way she styles them and uses light, gaze and posture to create a scene.

In 2005, the New York Times commissioned a portfolio of photographs of young Japanese women. The magazine is quoted as saying that “captured in van Meene’s work is the less stylized [than kitsch or anime] (but still stylish) vernacular of everyday Japanese girlhood. It is a look at once fashionable and ingenious, tender but not without the occasional flush of teenage allure.” Van Meene approached adolescent girls on the street in Tokyo and photographed them against nearby backdrops.

As van Meene gained recognition for her work, she expanded her subject matter further. She spent some time working outside of her home country, in England, Russia, Latvia, the United States and Japan. In 2004, van Meene photographed a series of mothers and expecting women from Russia, the United Kingdom and Latvia. In the 2007 series, Going my Own Way Home, van Meene photographed residents of an impoverished neighbourhood in the post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, focusing more on the cultural and economic context of her subjects than in her previous works.

Van Meene faced controversy in 2002 surrounding a photo in her Edinburgh exhibition which showed a young woman in her undergarments bent over the side of a bed. Though critics noted that this controversy was misplaced, it is understood that van Meene's photographs have an underlying sexual element to them and can create an uneasiness within the viewer.

Five years out of art school, van Meene was shortlisted for the Citibank Photography Prize (2001) and signed with New York's Matthew Marks gallery. Much of van Meene's early work is focused on photographing young girls in old houses in her hometown of Alkmaar.

Hellen van Meene was born in Alkmaar, the Netherlands. Her mother gave her a camera at age 15. Van Meene began taking photographs at age 16 when she would photograph her friends, which ultimately segued into the artist continuing to focus on adolescent girls in her professional photography with the aim of examining the construction of femininity in adolescence. For her undergraduate degree, Van Meene studied Fine Art at Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Other notable photographers who also graduated from Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam include Ger van Elk, Rineke Dijkstra, Peter Klashorst, Dana Lixenberg and Antonín Kratochvil. During her studies, van Meene spent a brief period in 1995 at the Edinburg College of Art. Other notable alumnae of this institution include Paul Rooney, Katie Paterson, and Paul Carter.

From 1995-1998, van Meene worked on a collection called “Series Blanc” which featured a girl in a transparent white lace dress, lacking undergarments. This photograph prompts the viewer to question whether or not the young subject is aware of the sexual nature of the image or still too innocent to understand.

Van Meene's “The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits” is a play on the speed at which rabbits reproduce and the idea that unhappy or uncomfortable moments are fleeting. This collection was created from 1994-2015 and primarily features square portraits of adolescent girls.

Over the course of her 23-year career from 1994 to 2017, van Meene has had one-person exhibitions in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, London, Milan, Tokyo and at the Venice Biennale and has exhibited at Sadie Coles HQ in London (2000, 2008), The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2002), Folkwang Museum in Essen (2007), and Fotomuseum Winterthur (2008). Her work has also been included in major group exhibitions like the Biennale for Architecture in Venice (2000), Fotografen in Nederland een Anthologie at Gemeente Museum Den Haag (2002), In Sight: Contemporary Dutch Photography from the Collection of the Stedelijk Museum at The Art Institute of Chicago (2005), Family Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2007), Paris Photo in Carrousel du Louvre in Paris (2008), Faces in the Nederlands Fotomusem in Rotterdam (2015) and at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, the Marc Foxx Gallery in LA, Le Case d’Arte in Milan, Galleria Laura Pecci in Milan, Galiere Paul Andiresse in Amsterdam and The Photographer's Gallery in London.

Hellen van Meene (born 1972) is a Dutch photographer known especially for her portraits.