Photographs by Valerie Belin

At Sikkema Jenkins and Co., a Chelsea gallery, I saw recent works by Valerie Belin. Her photographs include a few still lifes of fruits and portraits of glamorous (but not famous) women. The large format photographs are glossy and colourful, almost too colourful. The bright reds and yellows reminded me of the process of injecting fruits with artificial colours to make them look brighter. The construction of the fruit group with the careful placement of sliced strawberries and other fruits on each other gives the photo an eerie feel. Nature has become unnatural. Beauty has become sinister.

In a portrait of a beautiful black woman (the photos above is a different one), the subject’s skin and eyes look perfectly smooth and bright. She is pristine, not a single blemish on her face is noticeable. But she lacks emotion, and resembles a mannequin or a movie animation character rather than a human being. She is cold and heartless. While observing a series of 3 portraits of a smiling woman with exactly the same face but different headdresses and costumes out of a sci-fi fantasy, I felt the same mannequin-like heartlessness. It’s as if human beings, by deifying female movies stars and models have created beautiful monsters.