Leonie van der Helm (1973) is a lens-based visual artist based in Leiden, the Netherlands. She recently graduated with honors at the Fotoacademie of Amsterdam (May 2024).
Leonie started photographing during her recovery from mental health issues in 2017. During the covid crisis, she started making close up portraits of people through their living room windows. This project was taken up on by Museum Lakenhal (Leiden), who in 2021 purchased and exhibited ten of Leonie’s so called lockdown portraits. The project was longlisted for the Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize 2022. Some images were also published in Pf Magazine and Museum Hilversum’s publication PANdemIC.
In 2022 Leonie started studying at the Fotoacademie. She was looking for more depth in her work. She worked on her project Oud Zeer that was published in the online series Debuut Pf of Pf magazine in January 2024. This was the prelude to her graduation project Naked With The Truth, in which Leonie was exploring the body as carrier of past experiences. Leonie graduated with honors. Her work was exhibited during the group exposition EXPOSED in Loods 6 in Amsterdam.
