Helena van der Kraan

Timeless and uniquely personal, Helena van der Kraan’s still life photographs gently draw attention to intimate everyday objects and scenes. Her style can be traced back to the seventeenth-century genre of Dutch, still-life painting. Her images guide their viewers to reflect on the ordinary things in life. Her work boasts effortlessness, never trying to steer the viewer into a signal or particular interpretation. For her, a bottle remains a bottle; it does not need to be elevated in stature or significance. She finds comfort and allure in the photography of daily life.

Her still life work is composed of regular items found either in her home or at her studio. She explores themes of love, family, friendship, and memory through her arrangements which emphasise the relational meaning between objects. Through her rich understanding of atones and colours, poetic use of textures and the way light reflects on different materials (glass, metal, and water), She can create pictorial symphonies with great ease and sophistication.

Helena van der Kraan (1940-2020), is known for photographing her friends, acquaintances, and objects in natural daylight. The grey background is a prominent feature in her portraiture as it is reminiscent of the Czechoslovakia landscapes in which she grew up. After having fled Czechoslovakia in 1968, Van der Kraan was accepted for postgraduate study at the Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem.