there/then 2023

photographic series

 

There/then is an ongoing photographic series documenting and scrutinising the liminal and transient spaces my friends and I were equally relegated to and expelled from as suburban teens.

 

Neither child nor adult, adolescence is an in-between stage. Teenagers find themselves in-between public perception seen as both a threat and at risk of danger, and in-between public and private spaces balancing identities and expectations of childhood and adulthood simultaneously (Valentine, 2004).

 

It was this notion of in-between-ness from which the aesthetic of the photographs was inspired. The composition of the photographs is geometric with architectural elements cutting through the centre of the frame. This has the effect of the viewer feeling enclosed by the architecture or balancing along the centre edge, poised to fall either side.

 

The photographs capture a paradox, not only of the liminal spaces represented, but also that of adolescence, female fear, and hanging out as an actively idle social phenomenon (Pyyry & Tani 2016).

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Read the full research statement here.