Media of all sorts- books, movies, commercials - sell the experience of youth. Teen socializing is often portrayed as a self confident dramatic experience but, in actuality, the typical weekend for a teen is often full of mundane ritual activities, such as going to the mall. The divide between the fabrication and actuality of teenage life is decidedly large. As any good teen flick will tell you, teen-dom is a thrilling time full of sexual exploration and frivolity with a fun-loving group of friends, but what more commonly occurs is a great deal of observation and waiting for something to happen. This, coupled with the desire for peer acceptance, sexual desire inspired by uncontrollable hormones, and the need to project an image, often creates a more self conscious experience of life which never quite matches up with media expectation.
I decided to photograph within the mall environment to portray a more authentic idea of the teen experience. What I hope comes across in my photographs is the gap between what teens want to project and who they really are. I find the mall a fitting location for these pictures because it is where they buy the image of their desired life. Within a consumerist environment they find their social queues and act accordingly. To draw more specific connections to my work, I find a sadness in the girl who is posing as a live model. When I look at her, I sense a struggle to reconcile the real with the dream. Or, in the picture of the boy and girl cuddling on the mall couch, I see an organic sexuality that does not fit the social landscape.
My main goal with my portrait work is to find rawness in someone’s character. I hope my skill level is starting to tap into it.
