Hellen Van Meene

Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene was herself barely out of girlhood when she began to photograph adolescent girls in her home town in the north of Holland. Invited to photograph in Japan in 2000, she found that while she could not communicate directly with her subjects, her instincts regarding the universality of adolescent experience were translatable. In her square-format, mediumfocal-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.