untitled #99. 2000

courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, Gallery Koyanagi and Yancey Richardson Gallery

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untitled #83. 2000

courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, Gallery Koyanagi and Yancey Richardson Gallery

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untitled #79. 1999

courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, Gallery Koyanagi and Yancey Richardson Gallery

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untitled #24. 1998

courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, Gallery Koyanagi and Yancey Richardson Gallery

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untitled #184. 2004

courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, Gallery Koyanagi and Yancey Richardson Gallery

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untitled #180. 2004

courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, Gallery Koyanagi and Yancey Richardson Gallery

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For the past ten years Dutch photographer HELLEN VAN MEENE has been producing intimate portrait of  young people in their own individual surrounding environments.

The controlled aesthetic* (the carefully considered natural light, lush textures, and striking compositions) is undercut by a disquieting tension: the models’ clothes are ill-fitting or inside-out; one girl is asked to lie in a cold bath, fully clothed; another models a fresh bruise… this intimate collaboration between the photographer and her models simultaneously exposes the uncertain nature of adolescent identities and the complicated act of capturing them on film.

*”I am mainly concerned with things such as the lightfall on a white skin, bruises on an arm, hands which disfigure in water, and starting goose-pimples in frosty weather. Only then you see the texture of the skin so beautifully. It is exciting to see what happens when you put a leg over a horizontal bar or when you hang a person’s hair in a bush. Besides this I pay a lot of attention to the right position, to the mise-en-scene, to matching clothes as well as their colour, to the gaze and posture of the model. I arrange everything, to the smallest detail, such as the nail polish on their fingers.” – by HELLEN VAN MEENE