©Elena Helfrecht, The Spiral, from Plexus

This week we feature projects that explore the psychological landscape.

The psychological landscape is a genre that artists operate within where their focus is on emotional responses to the spaces they encounter or inhabit. It is a way of making work that reflects what the artist may feel or think in their mind. This affects how they engage with space as they take a certain angle leading them to elicit an emotional response within their images that follows suit of not the object in the frame, but rather the internal workings of how a place, event, or idea has shifted their perspective.

©Elena Helfrecht, Grandma, from Plexus

A contemporary artist who engages with the psychological landscape is Elena Helfrecht. Helfrecht recently published a new book with VOID, entitled Plexus. Within this book, we see her unpack her familial female lineage, stemming back to her grandmother, moving down to her mother, and finally reaching herself. She unpacks her inherited trauma and engages with the idea of post-memory to create unique interiors and still lives that evoke a sense of terror and the uncanny. Helfrecht reveals what it is like to recall old memories that are much more intense than the typical Sunday dinner with family. She deploys an intensity in her images which raises questions about what the viewer is exactly seeing, but also holds onto the attention of the onlooker through the compositional excellence and faint understanding of the objects in the frame.

©Elena Helfrecht, Plexus Book Cover, published by VOID

©Elena Helfrecht, Plexus Book Cover, published by VOID

©Elena Helfrecht, Spread from Plexus, published by VOID

©Elena Helfrecht, from Plexus, published by VOID

©Elena Helfrecht, from Plexus, published by VOID

Helfrecht is one of the most interesting contemporary artists engaging with an uncanny way of photographing. At times, her images deploy a heavy flash, leaving certain objects covered in bright highlights demanding attention and dropping the remaining space in the background off into nothingness. There is also a great deal of construction present in her work that leaves the viewer both confused and intrigued. She uses light to call attention to certain parts of her frames and creates a dreamlike quality in all of her images. In this body of work, she engages with objects within and around the domestic space. By deploying her photographic style, she breathes terror into the objects and spaces she is creating within. These images reveal to viewers that the walls of these homes and the items that are found have a dark past screaming to be shown to the world.

©Elena Helfrecht, Chasm, from Plexus

Plexus is an unsettling collection of images that aid viewers in understanding how post-memory and familial trauma has affected Helfrecht’s engagement with the domestic space. After the death of her grandmother, she felt compelled to make this work to unpack what was left behind. Through that unpacking, audience members can see that there is a great attachment to eerie depictions of this space and there is an undeniable sense of a fearful dreamlike state. None of the images are simple happenstance but rather contrived moments that fall in between what is real and what is fantasy. While engaging with a very real understanding of family hardship, Helfrecht above all allows for the emotional response to these events to drive the way she engages with the home and its contents.

The book Plexus is still available through VOID and if you are excited about engaging with psychological landscape work, this is a wonderful place to start.

©Elena Helfrecht, Entrance, from Plexus

©Elena Helfrecht, Flight II, from Plexus

Elena Helfrecht born in Bavaria in 1992, is a German visual artist known for her dreamlike and surreal photographic works. Her practice mainly revolves around phenomena of consciousness, combining individual experiences with collective history. Her work has been exhibited at South London Gallery (UK), Galleria Civica Cavour (IT), The Benaki Museum (GR), Palácio das Artes (BR), Peckham 24 (UK), Photo Vogue Festival (IT), and Encontros da Imagem (PT). She is a recipient of the British Journal of Photography International Photo Award, a Sony World Photo Award, the Camera Work Award and the AOP Student Award. She was selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries and nominated for the FOAM Paul Huf Award. Recently, VOID selected her as one of the Futures Photography Talents. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, ZEIT Magazin, Financial Times Weekend, The British Journal of Photography, Granta, Der Greif, and Source Magazine.

Elena Helfrecht, born in Bavaria in 1992, is a German visual artist known for her dreamlike and surreal photographic works. Her practice mainly revolves around phenomena of consciousness, combining individual experiences with collective history. Her work has been exhibited at South London Gallery (UK), Galleria Civica Cavour (IT), The Benaki Museum (GR), Palácio das Artes (BR), Peckham 24 (UK), Photo Vogue Festival (IT), and Encontros da Imagem (PT). She is a recipient of the British Journal of Photography International Photo Award, a Sony World Photo Award, the Camera Work Award and the AOP Student Award. She was selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries and nominated for the FOAM Paul Huf Award. Recently, VOID selected her as one of the Futures Photography Talents. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, ZEIT Magazin, Financial Times Weekend, The British Journal of Photography, Granta, Der Greif, and Source Magazine.

Instagram: @elenahelfrecht/

©Elena Helfrecht, Growth, from Plexus

©Elena Helfrecht, Supper, from Plexus

©Elena Helfrecht, The Deathbed, from Plexus

©Elena Helfrecht, The Door, from Plexus

©Elena Helfrecht, Below, from Plexus

Author Info:

Joe Cuccio is an image maker based in Rochester, NY. His images respond to a variety of arresting moments and harness the movement that occurs as life forges on. Inspiration for him arrives from chaotic and serene emotional experiences. Creating images is his way of highlighting humanity’s fleeting existence. He is an MFA candidate at Rochester Institute of Technology pursuing a degree in Photography and Related Media. His work has been exhibited at Memorial Art Gallery and Soho Photo Gallery. He has also contributed written pieces for Museé Magazine and Float Magazine.

Instagram:@joecucciophotos