Untitled #100
Untitled #100
Untitled #100
By Hellen van Meene
Untitled #100
Untitled #100
Untitled #100
Hellen van Meene mainly takes photographic portraits of youth, often focusing on young women and adolescent girls. This particular portrait of a Japanese girl with windblown hair is part of a series of photos Van Meene took during her time in Japan, for which she asked Japanese girls that she came across on the street and found interesting to pose for the camera. In her portraits of young women and teenage girls, Van Meene pays a great deal of attention to the staging of the image. She does not strive to capture the personality of the person portrayed, but is more interested in creating a certain atmosphere. The central theme in the artist’s work is the phase of a girl’s life in which she goes from being an adolescent to an adult: a phase in which self-awareness and vulnerability go hand-in-hand.