Artist Statement
Expectations of Adolescence
“Expectations of Adolescence” is a ten-year project documenting the lives of my cousin, Julia, and my half-sister, Katie, as they’ve grown from adolescent girls into young women. The project provided me with a new perspective on the various ways we fit in with different parts of our families. For me, it is looking into a life that may have been mine had my parents not divorced when I was a young girl.
The project was photographed around two environments. One is the house of our well-heeled grandparents and the other is on Round Island in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. The project documents the lives of the two girls during their sometimes-awkward evolution from adolescence to womanhood, and captures the simple moments in their search for their own identity. We see a gangly young Katie dancing in preparation for her jazz recital in Grandad’s driveway and later as a confident woman staring back at us in the hallway. The images provide a conduit in which we can recall our own development from young children into adults.

 

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