HISTORY RE-IMAGINED | PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAXINE HELFMAN

Example 1: This white photographer believes she is creating images of a “population that never was.”

Not Enough Face to Palm: Correcting "Historical Correction"

Okay, so I’m seeing another trend come back around, and it’s frustrating for me personally, since it shows that although I’m doing my best to change people’s assumed perceptions of European art history, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

The images subvert the obvious storyline – that social strata often break down along racial lines. Her photos are a “contradiction,” she said, to the stories of inequality that are being told in protests across the United States.  

Seriously???



Inspired by Flemish painting, “Historical Correction” reinterprets these old masters from a more contemporary point of view. Our world and cultures are changing so quickly we are witnessing the collision of past and present. Although my photographs are “invented realities,” they are about real issues. Populations shift, gender and race are redefined, past definitions are challenged, and the faces of cultures and customs change.
—- Maxine Helfman

To view more of Maxine Helfman’s work, please visit her website.


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I do like the photos, but the artist is laboring under a misapprehension.

Black Flemish DID, in fact, exist, and were painted by the artists she claims to be inspired by.