My favorite photographs are of adolescents, caught at the moment when newfound freedom, responsibility, and sexuality converge with an awareness of being observed and judged by the outside word. This is also the moment in which young people become more interested in controlling what a viewer sees of them. The most subtle of these photographs are often those with female subjects, who are beginning to understand that their bodies are increasingly being looked at and evaluated as they grow. Are we, the viewers, meant to see them as girls, teen-agers, or women, as innocent or experienced?
A couple of years ago there was this big furore about well-known Australian artist, Bill Henson’s photographic nudes of pubescent kids. I expressed a view at the time that was out of step with most of the Australian left. In a nutshell, I agreed that Henson’s work was art and I disagreed with the police closing down his exhibition, but where I digressed from the mainstream left, including with some of my feminist readers, was where I also thought his work was exploitation. Several times I’ve revisited those old Henson posts of mine wondering if I got it wrong, and there are some aspects I’d express differently today, but looking at these photographs of female adolescents in The New Yorker (the first and the last in the series, particularly) I was reminded once again of my discomfort with this whole subject.
I still really don’t know what I think about this. Something doesn’t sit well for me with a couple of these photograhs, even though adolescents make fascinating subjects and there is very little more compelling in this world than their youthful beauty and transformation. Photography is voyeuristic and intrusive; it is an artform with boggy ethical terrain. And we’re hardly a culture that empowers teenage girls and respects their bodily autonomy and sexuality.
Thoughts?
(Thanks to Dylan for the link).
I think I know what you mean. Sometimes those photos, the ones showing young women on the cusp so to speak, seem a little like catalogue shots…
I thought all of those pics linked to were ok with the exception of the first one (make up, cutsie night gown and the pose holding her hair back seemed too ‘adult’), the couple kissing and the last one of the girl posing in the bikini. For some reason those particular pictures didnt sit well with me.
I take a lot of photographs (personal and paid) and I agree that adolescents are amazing to photograph. But my way of capturing them, even those on the cusp (or over it) is different to most of the pics in that series you linked to. It is hard to explain HOW my work is different but it is. I avoid anything overtly sexual but there is still often a sexual element (particular with young women) for some reason. It can just be the expression or the way the young woman holds herself. I prefer unposed portraits (when I am behind the camera). I think candid is much more honest and honesty is something I value in my photography.
it is one of those issues where I feel confused. I think we are so bombarded with extremely offensive images of women that its difficult to take these as their own and not part of the over all sexualised images. it just makes me feel uneasy, like they are in their last moment s of being girls and we should leave them be.
A counterpoint?
http://the-riotact.com/tits-out-request-from-15yr-olds-with-poll/63180
Some adolescent boys practising a bit of objectification.
Those really are unsettling, and I can’t completely put my finger on the reasons why. I think of other controversial photos I’ve seen recently, like Madison Young’s “Becoming MILF” shots. I don’t think Young’s work was inappropriate, and a lot of that has to do with the value I feel it has in portraying the dual nature of mothers, who are both sexual and nurturing. Her work gives other adults, her peers, the chance to reflect on their nature, and on the often confusing journey into motherhood. Maybe I’m not giving adolescents enough credit, but I don’t see them really taking in these photos of their peers and using them as a tool to reflect and more deeply examine the challenges of the tumultuous emotional (and physical) place they’re in. For adults to use these images in that way just seems invasive.
I find myself with a surprising range of thoughts about this post, many of which are conflicting. There is something in several of the images that is reminiscent of the magazine spread, and I do find that disconcerting. Among all those thoughts, one seems more perhaps more clear than others:
I feel that there is an element of exploration in the photos; I am not sure that it is the girls who are carrying out that exploration, however. I hope that children would feel safe and secure in their homes, to be able to discover who they are and learn about the adults they will become. It seems, in these photographs, not simply that I am privy to this process, but that to some degree the process-turned-subject would take that exploration out of the hands of the girls in the photos, turned it over to the photographer’s imaginings, so that the photographer and the audience position themselves to determine how the process of self-discovery should/will occur. I realize that this conflicts with the idea that the girls may act with enough agency to present themselves openly and honestly, with full understanding of what it is they present. Perhaps such a thing is possible, but I do not think it especially likely. In the absence of fully-developed agency, then, I wonder if we are dictating the course of their self-discovery by situating it in a particular context and/or identifying it in particular ways.
I also think that I am uncomfortable with the photographer’s insertion of him-/herself into the safe spaces of the girls’ lives. Perhaps it makes for a more complex image, but the images feel intrusive, as though of a girl suddenly and awkwardly engaging an audience in what had been a personal process of development. I don’t mean that I think girls (or boys) should follow an entirely private process of sexual awareness, but rather that I find it especially important for such engagement be between peers who are most likely to be equal partners in the process. I personally doubt that the photographer or intended audience would fill the role of such an equal partner.
Perhaps it is indicative of our ideas about children that there is not a clear forum for them to present and investigate their own perceptions of these processes; rather, it falls to the adult world to depict them – although adults do so for their own purposes, according to their own ideas about the beauty of that moment of transformation that they project on the girls.
(Again, I don’t mean to suggest that this is a thorough analysis, by any means, only that these are the most clear of many initial responses.)
My 6-year-old recently made it clear that she looks forward to having developed breasts by curling up with a breast pump, including her future-breasts in self-portraits, and so forth. My initial response was to wince at how quickly that bit of awareness came! I find myself reading posts like this one with new attention, and considering what to reinforce, how to let her lead the way, and which potential crises I need to prepare for now.
Don’t feel too bad about your 6 year old’s interest in having breasts… I was 6 in 1988 and wasn’t exposed to a great deal of tv or media beyond books, but I remember looking forward to having them! I also worried that they would be very small. Funnily enough I do have small boobs like I worried, but I love them, they are perfect!
(NB Just remembered had too much exposure to Australasian Post magazine which still had page 3 girls at the time. So maybe don’t let your precocious reader get into the titty mags. I also read New Idea and Women’s Day. haha)
You’re welcome. Not too sure why i sent you the link, I’ve seen you link to the New Yorker before, so i reckon you would have found them yourself.
I like em for a bunch of reasons, mostly because the biological and cultural transmutation into adulthood is so uneven and these images challenge so many of the simplistic narratives that abound regarding that transition. I know my liking them is also partly the result of having been a youth worker from 85-07 and having learnt how important it is for my client base to have honest pictorial records of their growing, (of course photography has changed a lot in the last 5 years, esp for adolescents).
I think, for me, a lot of it comes down to who the presumed viewer is. The article accompanying the series asks what we are supposed to see in the pictures, but “me” or “someone like me” or any variation thereof is not among her suggestions. If other adolescent girls are not assumed to be among the viewers, if the photograph takes the standard view of an assumed (adult and straight) male observer, that is when it begins to cross that line, I think.
I don’t mean in terms of the artist’s intent, exactly, either. It more has to do with the framing, the way the girl in the photo is looking at the camera, how much control it looks like she has over where and how she is in the frame.
Which is why I agree with bri that candid photos tend to creep me out less. Unless the girl doesn’t know she is being photographed, they are about her being her, and not about her/the artist presenting an image for a (straight male) adult viewer. Also: photos of several girls together that appear to be friends, because there is a premise there that suggests the girls will be sharing the photo with each other later.
Melissa
“Maybe I’m not giving adolescents enough credit, but I don’t see them really taking in these photos of their peers and using them as a tool to reflect and more deeply examine the challenges of the tumultuous emotional (and physical) place they’re in.”
I think you are giving them plenty of credit. Expecting a 13 year olds to not only clearly articulate their experiences with – and viewpoints on – the most confusing aspects of how their lives and bodies are changing, but to also expect them to do so in a healthy way when the opening statement is being presented without actual words and within the viewpoint of someone with more power than them? (And who is often framing the conversation to be about the body they inhabit, not the person within?) Yes, there are 13 year olds that can do that, but it’s also more than I would expect of most adults. Let’s just say, I don’t think it’s impossible, but I do think that it’s difficult enough that it would not be how I would suggest starting that conversation.
And if that is the intent – or one of them – wouldn’t it make more sense to give the camera to the girls themselves?
Which goes back to the whole issue of who is the presumed viewer and the fact that the photos that creep me out are the ones that seem to only be conversing with adult (male) viewers and not also (female) adolescent ones. It’s not a conversation *with* the girls if they are not given an opportunity to at least either be the photographer or the viewer (or – gasp! – both). Especially when one is talking about adolescents – because adolescence is not just about changing bodies but also becoming part of adult conversations. So if it’s not a conversation *with* them – then what you have is a huge power imbalance and the people with the most power dictating the conversation to a very vulnerable group. That is what is creepy, imho, not the amount or lack of skin. The excess of skin that sometimes is on display in such photos just makes it even creepier.
Also (because writing a single book on a post several weeks old was not enough :p) part of what bugs me is that so often when these types of photos are highlighted and discussed, the photographers always seem to go out of their way to emphasize the girls’ girl-ness. Lots of Barbie dolls, a decided lack of sports (despite the fact that adolescence is when many girls get serious about their sports) – that sort of thing. Perhaps this has more to do with which ones get passed around than with what the artists actually take pictures of, but it makes me extra suspicious as to the motives of the both the photographers and the viewers – and quality of the conversation between them.
Love your comments jennygadget, very thoughtful.