RIGHT AFTER
In late 2006 I met a group of high school seniors on their way towards graduation and struggling with the transition from adolescence into adulthood. I photographed them for the year following as they finished high school, had a last summer together, and went off to college. The resulting images—of teenagers running through the streets, kissing on a front porch, watching fireworks over Manhattan—were candid moments of an anxious, uncertain and occasionally tumultuous time. Having recently grown out of adolescence myself, I took an interest in the banal and everyday aspects of their teenage experience, and in their quest for an identity as they struggled with the loss of adolescent abandon. It is found in amongst the awkward, arbitrary, and disjointed moments of social sparring, sexual exploration, conformity, vulnerability, and rebelliousness that shape and define coming of age. It is a monotony that is always apparent yet never directly addressed, showing itself only in the quiet, in-between moments, the moments that are not spectacular or funny or frightening, the moments when these teens are entirely alone with themselves.
In late 2006 I met a group of high school seniors on their way towards graduation and struggling with the transition from adolescence into adulthood. I photographed them for the year following as they finished high school, had a last summer together, and went off to college. The resulting images—of teenagers running through the streets, kissing on a front porch, watching fireworks over Manhattan—were candid moments of an anxious, uncertain and occasionally tumultuous time. Having recently grown out of adolescence myself, I took an interest in the banal and everyday aspects of their teenage experience, and in their quest for an identity as they struggled with the loss of adolescent abandon. It is found in amongst the awkward, arbitrary, and disjointed moments of social sparring, sexual exploration, conformity, vulnerability, and rebelliousness that shape and define coming of age. It is a monotony that is always apparent yet never directly addressed, showing itself only in the quiet, in-between moments, the moments that are not spectacular or funny or frightening, the moments when these teens are entirely alone with themselves.