teens

1997—2011

I have worked with teenagers and young adults from middle school to graduate school for more than forty years. As a result, I have come to know many amazing teens in ways that contradict the narrow and conventional definitions commonly portrayed in a wide variety of photography from advertising to the fine arts. I wanted to make images of teens that focused less on sexual desire, perfection, and inadequacy and that would belie the notion of teens as one-dimensional, lethargic, victimized, or self-destructive individuals.

The photographs in this series, with handwritten texts by the teens, represent a collaborative process between photographer and subject. The teens speak in their own voices and helped to determine the body language, facial expressions, clothing, and often the location of the photographs.

Additionally, this series of more than 130 portraits and texts support the idea that teenagers are very complex. The teenagers photographed offer images of multi-dimensional individuals possessing character, creativity, vulnerability, strength, and wisdom. They convey a variety of attitudes, ideas, and ways of being in the world. The portraits and their texts are simultaneously about identity and purpose, framed by the stated and implied cultural issues that surround them.