Photography Artist - Hellen van Meene, Cindy Sherman, Rineke Dijkstra

Hellen van Meene is an artist who makes photos, mostly portraits, mostly of young people, and mostly of girls. These young people are in carefully planned poses, with muted light seem to be hovering between melancholy and an atmosphere of departure.

Hellen van Meene's work is really interesting to me. She plays with light a lot and her subjects all seem sad or emotionally contained. I particularly like the images with a young girl as its subject and she looks sad or other worldly. You'd expect little girls to be happy, but in her photos they are just the opposite. I like the juxtaposition.

Through a number of different series of works, Cindy Sherman has raised challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art. Many of her photo-series, like the 1981 "Centerfolds," call attention to the stereotyping of women in films, television and magazines. When talking about one of her centerfold pictures Cindy stated, "In content I wanted a man opening up the magazine suddenly look at it with an expectation of something lascivious and then feel like the violator that they would be. - wiki

Cindy Sherman's work makes me feel rather uncomfortable. Her models are women posing in strange ways and with an excessive amount of makeup on. She really seems to be objectifying women and shows them nude and in compromising positions. I don't care for it at all.

Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer who concentrates on single portraits, and usually works in series, looking at groups such as adolescents, clubbers, and soldiers. Her subjects are often shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background. This compositional style is perhaps most notable in her well-known beach portraits, which generally feature one or more adolescents against a seascape. This style is again seen in her work on pregnant women. - wiki

Rineke Dijkstra's work doesn't seem nearly as interesting to me as Hellen van Meene's. She also takes images of young people, but most of her subjects just appear bored. They look like they know they are on a photo shoot and are just uncomfortable. It's just not visually exciting for me.