In my work I investigate the human body as a carrier of past experiences, in an attempt to give meaning to my own past. I have always experienced a lot of fear, sadness and anger, but I didn’t know where this came from. Ultimately, learning about intergenerational trauma helped me to understand all those feelings that I wasn’t supposed to have and could not explain
Traumas, experiences from your early life, you store and carry with you in your body. In my work I look for a way to express these experiences. It is my way of communicating what I feel and in doing so acknowledging myself, my story and similar stories of others. With my works I visualize what I cannot put into words. With this I process my past and show my inner self in all its facets.
I could not express myself with photography alone, because it was not sufficiently expressive for me. I destroy and then ‘repair’ the photos of female nudes in uncomfortable positions in abandoned places. This method suits my story, because through my work I take back my own narrative and in a certain sense rewrite it.
I look for the essence of each individual image and try to reinforce it by making a physical intervention: by tearing the prints, cutting them, sanding over them, sticking things back, to paint or otherwise physically process. In doing so, I damage the photos to a greater or lesser extent, and then restore them in a certain way, whereby the ‘scars’ remain visible. With this I want to illustrate elusive trauma.
As a result of my working method, almost all pieces are unique.
Leonie van der Helm (1973) is a photographer and artist based in Leiden, the Netherlands. She studies at the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam.
Leonie started photographing halfway her recovery from mental problems in 2017. Feeling alienated and disconnected, she started taking up on photography as a means to reconnect with others as well as herself.
In her current work Leonie is exploring the human body as a carrier of past experiences, trying to give meaning to her own past. Leonie’s work – and that of her fellow graduating students – can be seen at the exhibition EXPOSED at Loods 6 in Amsterdam from 17 to 20 May 2024.