Tout va disparaître, à Saint-Pétersbourg

Hellen van Meene (1972) is regarded as one of the leading Dutch photographers of her generation. The New York magazine Village Voice ranked her book Portretten / Portraits (2005) in the top 25 photo books of the year, and in 2007 she was chosen as the fourth most successful artist in the Netherlands. Her trademark is the intriguing portraits that she makes, usually of adolescent girls whom she gets to pose in risqué but well-conceived situations.

Hellen van Meene photographs her models in all their budding determination without leaving out their vulnerability. The images show the self-aware but insecure feeling that accompanies the emerging identity of the girls. The often fairy-like dresses and bodices in which the models are dressed underline not only their vulnerability, but also their innocence and attractiveness.

The result is an alienating effect that is typical of the stage in which they find themselves: between childhood and adulthood, between innocence and seduction.

Although Van Meene makes no attempt to disguise the fact that the photographs are staged from pose and expression to location and clothing, she still works in an intuitive way. The atmosphere of each photograph is the result of a personal approach to her model, irrespective of nationality, race or social status. Young women – girls on the eve of their metamorphosis into adulthood - have for Van Meene, in spite of their insecurity, the winning gift of being themselves.

This square portrait of a young lady from St Petersburg was staged to perfection by Van Meene in 2008. The atmosphere of the dark, dilapidated kitchen is in sharp contrast with the budding beauty of the subtly illuminated girl, and the illumination from one side evokes reminiscences of the 17th-century pictorial world of Vermeer.

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