Board_Advisors_etc 3..5

From 1971 through 1974, Hellebrand produced a
series of medium format black-and-white photo-
graphs of Londoners in their homes. The portraits
that she captured culminated in a solo exhibition for
Hellebrand at London’s National Portrait Gallery in
1974, and a book,Londoners at Home, published in
the same year. Her portraits, representing a variety of
Londoners of varying ages, sexes, occupations, and
classes, all convey a common sense of the desperation
of her subjects. For instance, the photograph shown
on the cover and plate #7 inLondoners at Home,
entitled ‘‘Young girl (13 years old),’’ portrays a seated
female who is trying to appear to be a grown woman.
Her extended hand with engagement/wedding band
upon it, holding a burning cigarette, would seem to
illustrate that she is indeed a woman. One could
merely accept the image the young girl is projecting,
except that her self-conscious expression and stance
belie it. Coupled with that, the completely empty
space Hellebrand has left around the girl further
diminishes her fac ̧ade of womanhood.
Many of Hellebrand’s other photos fromLon-
doners at Homeshow a hodgepodge of possessions
in her subjects’ homes that Hellebrand carefully
included to reflect some truth about their owners.
Photographing with a medium-format camera and
wide-angle lens corrected for distortion, Hellebrand
got very close to her subjects and took in just as
much of their home’s surroundings as she wanted
to convey her ideas. In choosing challenging existing
light in what were obviously poorly or unevenly lit
and shadowy apartments, Hellebrand made an artis-
tic decision to emphasize the real over the artificial.
Despite the great degree of stillness that must have
been required on the part of her subjects, they still
appear to look real—natural in their surroundings.
In 1974, Hellebrand returned to Philadelphia and
began exhibiting her work at Light Gallery in New
York. She taught photography at Philadelphia Col-
lege of Art in 1975 and at Bucks County Commu-
nity College from 1975 to 1988. The early 1980s
marked the beginning of a transitional period for
Hellebrand’s photography, moving away from the
documentary approach toward people she’d pur-
sued for roughly 20 years and toward an abstract
approach. As her focus changed, so too did her
medium. Using an 8
10-inch view camera, Helle-
brand made extreme close-up portraits of faces and
bodies. In carefully cropping within camera on cer-
tain parts of peoples faces and bodies, she made
abstractions out of them. In the mid-1980s, Helle-
brand photographed landscapes in 8
10, produ-
cing small platinum prints. A series of photographs
of handwriting Hellebrand took in the late 1980s
marked her turning point from documentation to

abstraction. This work, inspired by Hellebrand’s

interest in calligraphy, was taken from samples of

handwriting, greatly enlarged, toned brown, and

printed on matte paper.

Hellebrand’s artistic path, her shift from people

to nature and from more conventional documen-

tary to more experimental abstract, runs concur-

rent with her spiritual belief of Sufism as it relates

to developing one’s higher perception of reality

beyond mere appearances. Her images of nature

are not so much an expression of their object as

they are an expression of her vision of nature and

her interpretation of the divine within it. Helle-

brand began to photograph in color and print digi-

tally in the early 1990s, beginning with landscapes.

In the late 1990s, she shot tree branches moving in

the wind. Her untitledWater Series #754, an image

taken from running water, is representative of the

work she has done from 2002 to 2004, digitally

photographing water and clouds and then manip-

ulating the results. She has changed the apparent

forms of nature, enhancing their color, texture, and

contrast until her large-scale giclee prints (a digital

process) appear very much like pastel drawings.

Hellebrand’s work has appeared in many group

shows, including major shows at the International

Center of Photography and the Museum of Modern

Art, in New York. Besides Hellebrand’s 1974 solo

exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Lon-

don, she has had two major solo exhibits in 1984

and 1989 at Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York. Her

work can be seen in many public collections, nota-

bly in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the

National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Phi-

ladelphia Museum of Art. Hellebrand has been the

recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Gug-

genheim Memorial Foundation and the National

Endowment for the Arts.

TONYDEGeorge

Seealso:Abstraction; Brandt, Bill

Biography

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1944. Attended Uni-

versity of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1962–1963;

attended Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, in

1963–1964; received B.A. in English Literature from

Columbia University, New York in 1971. Studied photo-

graphy at USC in 1963; studied photography briefly

with Alexey Brodovitch in New York in 1964; studied

photography with Bill Brandt in London, 1971–1973.

Adjunct Professor at Parson’s School of Design, New

York, 1970; Adjunct faculty at Philadelphia College of

Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1975; Associate Profes-

sor of Art at Bucks County Community, Newtown,

Pennsylvania, 1975–1986; Visiting critic at Yale Univer-

HELLEBRAND, NANCY