Hellen van Meene (Alkmaar, 1972) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 1996 and has worked as an autonomous photographer ever since. Her international breakthrough came with her intimate portraits of young girls teetering on the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Van Meene finds her models in her own surroundings or on the street, attracted by the often unconventional beauty she sees in them. Van Meene is not concerned with capturing the identity or character of her subjects; her photographs are timeless portraits marked by a dreamy, sometimes fairy-tale atmosphere. She always constructs her images in detail, attuning location, model, styling, pose and lighting with the greatest care. Her staging never feels forced, however; the location gives rise to the composition in an organic way, and her models look natural. The balanced use of colour and light in her images complement their tranquil mood.

In 1999 Hellen van Meene won the Charlotte Köhler Prize awarded by the Prins Bernhard Culture Fund. In 2006 she had a solo exhibition in Huis Marseille. In 2015 a large retrospective, The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits, was held in The Hague Museum of Photography. In 2016 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. Her work is held in many international museum and private collections, including those of Huis Marseille, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the MOCA in Los Angeles, and both the Guggenheim and the MoMA in New York.