Helén Petersen (b. Bergen) is a Norwegian photographer based on Stord and Halsnøy on the west coast of Norway, where the surrounding nature serves as a vital source of inspiration for her enigmatic and intimate photographs. She is a self-taught artist, but over the years she has participated in and assisted at numerous photography workshops, as well as received individual mentorship in darkroom techniques.
For the past 15 years, Petersen has worked primarily with photography as her main artistic medium. Drawing on a background in painting, drawing, and sculpture, she brings a distinctive sense of visual energy and material presence to her narratives.
Through her work, Helén Petersen invites us into a quiet yet charged black-and-white universe, where memory and imagination seamlessly merge. Her works emerge through an intuitive and instinctive process, often triggered by memories-real or imagined-as well as by objects, experiences, and nature.
Nature occupies a central place in Petersen's visual world, whether it appears in microscopic details or expansive landscapes. For her, the greatest can only exist through the smallest. Through dreamlike revisitations of the landscapes of childhood, she creates spaces that allow us to enter other realities-familiar, yet at the same time strangely unfamiliar and sometimes obscure.
Petersen mainly works with analogue silver gelatin prints, meticulously handcrafted in her own darkroom. Each photograph bears the imprint of a slow, tactile process that lends the images a distinctive depth and intimacy-an imprint of time, light, and silence.
Petersen´s work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Georgia, the United States, Japan, Serbia, and Norway, and she is represented by LA Noble Gallery in London.
Alongside her own artistic practice, Petersen is Head of Department at Halsnøy Monastery, Sunnhordland Museum, where she curates exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and conferences throughout the year. She was also the administrative director of the museum's Artist-in-Residence programme.
Helén Petersen - Realities Imagined
