Getting a chance to meet a wider public by making an artist speech in Gallery Elipsis after five days workshop and before leaving Istanbul, van Meene has made a photo shooting that will be published in Tank magazine's September issue in her busy schedule.

​Born in 1972, Hellen van Meene had photography education in Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Starting her career by shooting photographs of young girls in her home town Alkmaar, Van Meene had an international success with her fictional portraits, to which she has included androgynous looking young boys over the time and she was nominated as a candidate in 2001 for Citibank Photography Award (now it is called Deutsche Börse Photography Awards), which is one of the most prestigious awards on photography.

Hellen van Meene's portraits of adolescent girls and young women, which form the majority of her works, are in fact photographs shaping with the perception of van Meene towards the young adolescent ones and referring to the uncanny nature of that period rather than being the portraits of individuals.  These photographs, in which the collaboration in between the photographer and the photographed person at its highest level, are trying to underline the vulnerability, shyness and uncertainties with a performative attitude: "As a matter of fact, the subject matter in my works are not the personality or the mental state of the models I photograph. I notice something in them; a chemistry forms in between us and I create something new by taking this as my starting point. I am not a kind of photographer, who would produce photographs that the families or the acquaintances of the model will recognize them at first glance. Therefore, my photographs do not claim to be a portrait."

Shooting initially the photographs of the children of acquaintant families or her friends, who do not show their age, in the place she lives, van Meene later on has realized works in Latvia, Russia, Japan and the U.S.A. : "I generally work with the models from my neighbourhood. It is like a modelling agency of my own... Since I know them, I can guess which one to photograph in the setting I have in my mind.  Since they know me, I don't have to explain what I want to do each time we do a shooting. I am not that patient person, who would wait to find the right model." Using mostly borrowed clothes from her grandmother or her friends, one of the most important feature of van Meene's photography is her using natural light whether she photographs her models indoors or outdoors: "Sunlight is full of surprises; you can encounter with situations you can't guess before hand. The studio light is very stable. I prefer to work with natural light since I wish to be more flexible." this kind of usage of light makes us think that van Meen, who has grown up in Holland with a deep-rooted painting tradition and had an education in art academy, is painting with her photography.

By making a change that wasn't expected from her, recently and directed her interest to the dogs around her, van Meene shoots their photograph on a carpet with a red or dark blue background. It should be underlined that her realization on dogs being one of the most painted animal in art history, plays a part in this new orientation of hers. Her strong relationship with dogs that also astonished van Meene, who has actually weak relationship with dogs and even is scared of them, has caused her to produce unique photographs. Uniqueness in Hellen van Meene's photographs might seem to be originated from spontaneity. But, you can understand that they are not spontaneous when you look at the photographs more carefully. The communication and collaboration in between the photographer and the model forms the base that gives the soul to these photographs. Whether the subject matter of the photograph is youngsters or the dogs, an aura formed out of this relationship, cover the photographs.  The chosen models or the animals, the place where they are photographed, the backgrounds, the clothing of the models and the states of the models do all make the photographs unique. Feeling that the models know what she wants to do, van Meen says that the model thus relaxes and contributes to the photograph.

Let's have a look at the short notes from five days workshop. Workshop, in which twelve people in total attended including three people from Russia, Norway and Lebanon, started with the assessment of participants' works, who produce not only portrait works, but works from very different areas ranging from documentary to conceptual. During the five days of assessment period while the participants were explaining the relationship they form with photographs, the background of their work and the areas that they wish to improve themselves, Hellen van Meene gave directions on how they can improve themselves on portrait and other matters.  At this point it should be stated that van Meen has made straight forward criticism, yet the workshops are good opportunities in order to face these kind of criticisms and to think about themç Following the assessment of the works and the decision on the type of a mini project that the participants will realize within the workshop process, it is gone out to see how van Meene communicates with the person attracting her attention and how she directs them in the shooting process and to practice these all together. This process, in which the participants photographed each other initially and then the interesting people that they meet on the street, was ver productive especially for the participants, who wanted to go for the portrait direction.  The following days included van Meen's daily presentations in the mornings on the photographers from her photography history and near period photographers, whom she was inspired from, liked and even the ones she doesn't like and subsequently the shooting of the participants for their new mini projects.  And on the last day of the workshop the presentation of these projects and their assessments are made.

Realized in Gallery Elipsis, van Meene mentioned her practices, the way she finds her models, the way she chooses her settings, the surprises, which couldn't be planned previously since she prefers to do the shootings in the homes of models or in her own place, the advantages to do editorial work from time to time and a lot of other things accompanied with the examples of her work from 1996 up today n her artist speech.

Although five days may seem like a long period, we can say that those five days are gone with the wind both for van Meene and the participants since it witnessed a scurry of presentations and the photography shootings. Not to mention all those stories told in between the lines...