The artists involved examine adolescence in various ways. They ask what is characteristic of this phase of life, how people deal with the process of growing up and which problems can result from it. The artists partly reflect their own experiences and memories or refer to social and political contexts.
Ingar Krauss has been dealing with the topics of childhood and adolescence for some years already. In his work “One knows nothing about the children” (“Von den Kindern weiß man nichts”) he does not search in his poetic portraits the specific outward appearance, but an expression of the children’s inner lives and biographic mouldings. In his pictures one can detect along with the innocence a subtle moment of awakening sexuality. Krauss succeeds in capturing this stage between childhood and adulthood, the melancholy that is perceptible in this moment of transformation.
Marco Perocco reflects this in-between-stage – the moment of innocence and purity as well as the desire for the unknown. In his work ”Teenagers”he showes the characteristics of a juvenile face, not yet moulded by the traces of time. What Perocco captures is the tenderness and frailness of eyes that haven’t seen much yet but are hungry and already show a premonition of the future.
Annabel Elgar’s photographs deal with the own ambivalent memory of the loss of innocence. Her mise-en-sc?ne of places and people radiates a certain uneasiness, which stresses the contradictoriness of this adolescent experience. Elgar’s pictures are complex and rich. A destroyed balloon, a scratch on the knee become the projection surface of the own memories.
In his mercilessly open and grotesque self-producement <”Little Boy”, Steven Tynan himself slips into the role of an innocent child. The helplessness of his naked or barely dressed overweight body makes room for interpretations and questions. Questions on the role and responsibility as a father, on sexuality and age, on vulnerability – questions which he sees himself, as a man living in today’s society, confronted with.
Evgeni Mokhorev, shooting star of the art scene of St. Petersburg, picks out as a central theme of his works the situation of Russian street children. The children produce themselves, and the artist takes the silent observer’s role. Mokhorev foregrounds the frailty of these children, who have to fend for themselves and are forced to live adults’ lives. This particular way of being grown up is also embodied in the postures these young people have adopted for the shooting.