I wasn’t aware of the Impressions Photographic Gallery in Bradford until I stumbled across their website quite by accident. Looking around a fairly recent exhibition by Carolyn Mendelsohn caught my attention as it was about portraiture with an interesting angle. Here’s the overview:
Made over a period of 6 years, Being Inbetween is a series of powerful photographic portraits of girls aged between ten and twelve, exploring the complex transition between childhood and young adulthood. With many portraits never-before exhibited, this is the most extensive exhibition of the series to date.
Driven by personal experience, award-winning photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn has worked collaboratively with 90 girls who are in the midst of navigating this complex, and potentially defining, period in their lives. Too often the target of relentless marketing campaigns and victims of social media pressures, girls at this age are often placed into an amorphous group described as ‘tweens’. Through her photography and accompanying interviews, Mendelsohn allows each individual an opportunity to reclaim their identity, encouraging a dialogue on ambitions and aspirations, hopes and fears.
The girls are both creative participants and collaborators. Invited by Mendelsohn to select their own clothing and stance for the portrait, each girl’s features and gestures are recorded against the same grey hand-painted backdrop. In these three-quarter length portraits, each girl looks directly into the camera. This careful and measured photographic approach bestows the girls with authority, granting them a certain power held within their gaze.
Featuring girls from a spectrum of cultural and ethnic backgrounds; disabled girls as well as able-bodied; and girls from a range of socio- economic circumstances, Being Inbetween offers an inclusive insight into this generation of girls. A personal narrative accompanies each photograph, with Mendelsohn asking the same set of questions to each of her collaborators: What is your full name? How old are you?, followed by more in-depth and emotionally- charged questions: What do you love? What is your ambition? What do you really dislike? What are your hopes for the future?
When asking about their wider fears and concerns, Mendelsohn noted a change in responses, reflecting wider issues in society and anchoring the project to a specific moment in time. Responses recorded in 2014/15 encompassed worries about hunger, homelessness, loss, and war. Throughout 2019, the girls more frequently referenced the world and environment as a source of anxiety.
It was particularly interesting to me because of my public speaking work with Speakers Trust in schools, working with Year 10 students. They have to devise their own speeches, drawn from their experiences and concerns, so I was intrigued by the photographers reflections on her participants changing priorities.
Carolyn Mendelsohn is a photographer, and filmmaker who has lived and worked across the UK. Her passion is making personal work, based on the lives of individuals and their stories. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and published by The Guardian, The Sunday Times, La Monde, and BJP amongst others. Carolyn’s awards including BJP Portrait of Britain 2017 and 2019, The Royal Photographic Society International Print exhibitions RPS IPE 159 gold and she was a finalist for RPS IPE 160. Website