Farewell girlhood, hello cruel world
The Sunday Age
Sunday December 13, 2009
MELBOURNE photographer Carla Gottgens' portrait exhibition of teenage girls in transition to adulthood marks her attempt to throw light on what she sees as forgotten years.Gottgens' project tracks the lives of a dozen Melbourne girls after they leave school. The exhibition, Girl??? I'm a Woman Now!, is private and revealing €” Gottgens' subjects deal with depression, sexual orientation, career confusion, pregnancy, miscarriage, parents getting cancer and, in one case, one of the women being involved in a serious road accident.The photographer, whose day job includes shooting for the business wire service Bloomberg, had the idea long before last year's Bill Henson controversy over photographing young women €” in fact, the exhibition, which opened on Friday, had its genesis more than six years ago when Gottgens was invited to do a masters degree at RMIT."For a long time I'd felt that there was a lack of coverage of that particular transitional time in people's lives. A lot of artists focus on the early teenage years and the realisation of a teenager coming to terms with their body changing, and how the world is perceiving them. But when girls, and boys too, leave school it's as if it's assumed that they'll head out into the world, become independent and just get on with things."The one group of that age that has been focused on by photographers is people at risk, who might be in state care, dealing with abusive families, drugs or early pregnancy. Gottgens wanted to avoid that, and photograph "ordinary" young women.Some of her subjects were the children of friends, but the photographer drummed most of them up by writing letters to schools and asking if she could meet with interested students.While the schools were enthusiastic, the process was kept formal. Gottgens went to the participating schools and talked to a group of students selected by the teachers. She gave them her phone number and then waited to see if anybody would call.Thirteen did, and the only one not represented in the exhibition fell by the wayside simply because the gap between photos had been too long.Despite the miracles of modern technology, Gottgens found keeping in touch with her candidates quite difficult."None of them, surprisingly, were contactable on email," she says. "Even mobile phones were fairly rare, and they'd lose them and get a different number."And while young people are media savvy and comfortable with a photographer intruding in their lives and having photos of them displayed in a public gallery, Gottgens found there were limits. "Often I'd do shots at their homes and they'd tidy their bedroom before I arrived, which would make me very angry. I always told them that. They'd say, 'Oh, sorry, I couldn't help it!' "Girl??? I'm a Woman Now! is at the Pigment Gallery, Level 2, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, until December 19.
© 2009 The Sunday Age
