As a tween my daughter was morphing before my eyes, and I wanted to capture that transition.

 

The tween years are full of tensions – with one foot still in childhood, many adult-sized anxieties and few adult-sized freedoms, and big questions about identity, appearance, conformity, status, and purpose.

 

Photography is by nature intrusive, and M became increasingly uncomfortable with having a lens focused on her..

 

I gave her veto power over the images. She disliked many of my favorites. “I don’t like how I look,” or “I’m no longer the person I was then,” or “what you think you see in this picture is not how I was feeling,” she said.

 

For a show about identity in transition, her reaction was fitting.

 

Attentiveness is one form of love, and so I envisioned this series as a way to show M how much I cherish her. Ultimately, she vetoed only two images. It is her great gift back to me that she allowed me to display this work.