Helen Dennis

Street Scenes of Harlem
Year: 2003-2004
Medium: Photographic drawing
Dimensions: 20 " x 20"

Artist Statement:

Helen Dennis’ artwork sits on the boundary of photography and drawing, challenging the conventional reading of a photographic image. Helen uses the photographic process to produce images, derived from drawings of architectural structures, which are not immediately recognized as photographic prints. 
Helen creates large mural size black and white photographic prints focusing on urban spaces and architecture. They are compiled by many intense fine white lines, which build up the image before the viewer. The drawings are introduced to the photographic process and used in a similar way to a negative. Through layers of drawings and repeated exposure of the images, this repeated mark takes on different forms, thickness, tones, and energy. However, each image is created using the same pen on the same type of paper and fused within traditional photographic processes. Helen’s artwork leads the viewer into an ambiguous temporal realm by focusing on the extended time of a single moment. The differing temporality of each medium utilizes the differences between photography and drawing. 

Helen’s interest in space and describing architecture through a two-dimensional medium is prevalent within her practice. Urban architecture provides an array of angles, geometric structures, and perspectives, from which the images are created to describe the space. The generic nature of buildings, and their geometry, relates to the repetitive generic and angular marks all adding to the intensity of the artwork.


 

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