New Photos Japan

Illustrated paper-covered cardboard box, 20,5 x 20,5 x 3 cms., containing 31 loose sheets with colour illustrations printed on heavy cardstock + cardboard sheets with an interview by Karel Schampers, short biography, list of exhibitions, bibliography. Limited to 2500 copies and i.a. published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Hellen van Meene, Japan Series’ at Inverleith House, The Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh & De Hallen, Haarlem (Netherlands). Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene was herself barely out of girlhood when she began to photograph adolescent girls whom she knew, or found, in her home town of Alkmaar in the north of Holland. Invited to photograph in Japan in 2000, she found that while she could not communicate More…
directly with her subjects, her instincts regarding the universality of adolescent experience, and her visual and stylistic approach to it, were translatable. In her square-format, medium-focal-length pictures of unnamed girls, van Meene strives to compose photographs of adolescent situations and attitudes, which represent the type of ‘normality’ we don’t usually share with others, but keep to ourselves.