For anyone who has spent much time in museums gazing at canvas after canvas of pasty and wealthy snoots from the Low Countries, Maxine Helfman’s “Historical Correction” series of photographs is likely to seem a breath of fresh air. Helfman, who is a white woman in her early sixties and has always adored Flemish portraiture of the 1400-1700 period, started thinking about the people who never qualified for inclusion in the works of Jacob van Utrecht and Bernard van Orley. So, in her series of photographs, Helfman has replaced the faces of those pasty Flemish nobles with those of modern men and women of color.

The power relations inherent in 1542 Flanders, with white Europeans plundering the globe for resources, land, labor—things aren’t so different today, Helfman’s portraits seem to say. Why do these stately portraits seem odd? Do they seem odd? Why aren’t we used to that? The most powerful man on the planet is the direct (and recent) descendant of a Kenyan citizen, and yet that template doesn’t seem likely to recapitulate itself in the future. (And the senseless tragedies of Ferguson, Staten Island, Baltimore, Cleveland still ring in our ears.)

To the Huffington Post Helfman commented, “My intention is to produce bodies of work that look at history and issues of inequality. ... My projects are always shot from a point of respect for my subjects.” In other recent projects, Helfman has worked with black women posing as geishas and boys wearing dresses as a way of fucking with our expectations regarding identity.

Helfman’s fictional narratives provide a different view on history and culture. By blending subjects of color from today with the inescapably classist modes of expression from the distant past, she implies that disentangling race and class might not be possible at the present time. This is not an irreverent project, commented Helfman to CNN. “I never want to create something that’s tongue-in-cheek because that defeats the purpose. ... It’s disrespectful to the [statement] I’m trying to make.” 

And of course, it’s not the final word, by any stretch: “All of my projects begin with that concept,” she says. “It is the conversation that is generated that is fascinating … positive and negative.”
 

Yelrah
 

Esales
 

Imim
 

Romante
 

Semaj
 

Enen
 

Sirch
 

Esirah
 

Wettham
 

Nedeaj
 

Nevaeh
 

Ynothna
 

Idotenyin
 
via Beautiful/Decay