ICONIC WOMEN
Portraits Beyond the Public Image
Some women become icons. Their faces, achievements and stories become part of our collective memory.
But what lies beyond the public image?
In this series, Frank van Hemert explores the inner presence of remarkable women — artists, thinkers, leaders and women who have challenged the world around them. These are not conventional portraits, but intuitive interpretations of the person behind the familiar image.
The familiar image becomes a starting point for something less visible: character, vulnerability, strength, imagination and the unknown self.
The portrait is not an answer. It is a question.
FRIDA KAHLO
4 portraits
Beyond the self-portrait
In these portraits I am not trying to reproduce the icon. I am interested in the presence behind the image — the woman who looked back at the world through her own constructed face.
HANNAH ARENDT
Beyond the thinker
I am interested not only in the intellectual behind the ideas, but in the presence of the woman herself — the tension between thought, solitude and the human being behind the formidable mind.
PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
Beyond the self-portrait
In these portraits I look beyond the historical figure and the artist. I am searching for the woman who dared to look at herself without disguising what she saw — vulnerable, uncompromising and profoundly alive.
JOSEPHINE BAKER
Beyond the performance
I am interested in the woman behind the performer — the strength, vulnerability and determination beneath the dazzling public image.
WHITNEY HOUSTON
Beyond the voice
In this portrait I look beyond the singer and the celebrity. I am searching for the woman behind the voice — where immense talent, vulnerability, beauty and the pressures of being an icon meet.
MARLENE DUMAS
Beyond the artist
To portray another artist is also to enter into a dialogue with her way of looking. In this portrait I am not simply depicting Marlene Dumas, but searching for the presence behind the artist who has spent her life questioning the image of others.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
Beyond the camera
Here the relationship is reversed. The woman who normally stands behind the camera becomes the subject of the portrait. I am interested in the presence of the observer when the observer herself becomes visible.
BRIGITTE BARDOT
Beyond the icon
I look beyond the cinematic icon and the image projected onto her. What remains when the fantasy disappears? What lies behind the face that the world thought it already knew?
ROSA LUXEMBURG
Beyond the revolutionary
In this portrait I am interested in the woman behind the revolutionary — the intellect, passion and vulnerability that existed alongside her political determination. The public figure becomes, once again, a human presence.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
6 portraits
Beyond the flower
In these six portraits I return to O’Keeffe again and again, searching for different aspects of the same presence. Each portrait becomes another encounter — not an attempt to define her, but to approach something that remains unseen.
Six portraits. One woman. Six different encounters with the unseen self.
BEYOND THE IMAGE
Every portrait begins with what we think we know.
A face.
A name.
A history.
A public image.
Painting can open a space beyond recognition.
The image remains visible, yet something else begins to emerge — something uncertain, intimate, and impossible to fully comprehend.
Perhaps that is where the portrait truly begins.
Not the person we know.
Not the image we remember.
But the presence that remains unknown.
Visualizing the unknown self.