BELLENGER Hélène

Right Color

France

2019

Image technology in the 1920s to 1950s involved a monochrome colorimetric spectre lacking in subtlety. To bring out contrasts and facial expressiveness, make-up was heavily used, sometimes to grotesque effects. Royal blue on eye lids and lips, a touch of sulphur yellow on the nose, green powder on cheekbones… Max Factor is famous for inventing make-up adapted to the technology of the time designed to enhance features on screen. By collecting articles on television and cinema make-up from Cinémonde magazines dating to the 1920s-1940s, I have unearthed the make-up styles invisible on screen at the time. The portraits we see look clown-like and disturbing, and question the techniques used to build images of beauty.

This series was produced with the Résidence 1+2 Factory and with the Toulouse Cinémathèque.

About the artist

Born in 1989, and graduated from the French National School of Photography in 2016, Helene Bellenger is a visual artist who lives and works in Marseille. As an iconographer and a Pictures Generation heiress, Helene Bellenger collects and hijaks images taken from her daily and digital life, in order to investigate the workings of her visual culture and how mass media shape our perception of the world.