For the past seven years, Hellen van Meene has been producing intimate portraits of adolescents. Though the introspective gaze of her models suggest that these are spontaneous, private moments in the lives of her subjects, the carefully considered natural light, lush textures, and striking compositions betray van Meene's hand in choreographing each image down to the finest detail. Throughout, the picturesque qualities are 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.

Hellen van Meene was educated at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She began exhibiting her work in 1994 and has had one-person exhibitions in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, London, Milan, Tokyo, and at the Venice Biennale. In 2001 she was shortlisted for the Citibank Photography Prize.

Pubescent girlhood has been the central subject of Hellen van Meene's work; the depiction and dramatization of the moment that girls change, physically and emotionally, into women. Her models are often caught in languorous poses, sometimes stripped to their underwear, sometimes viewed in states of worrying discomfort, with their flesh squeezed or bruised or otherwise put under pressure.

"The photographs are not meant to be portraits, which is why they have no titles. It is not my intention to give expression to their personality or state of mind. Nor do i want to sketch a sociological image of contemporary youth or girls at the moment of puberty...As a matter of fact, i treat my models as objects that you can direct and guide. They are simply material for me."

Kate Bush