PETRA COLLINS

“My goal is just to create images that generate a conversation about things that aren’t spoken about. I want to change the ways young girls look at themselves and the way women at large are looked at…. So, when I was 15, and started working, it was a time when I was going through puberty, and beginning to discover my sexuality and photography and film were a means of working that out.”

– Petra Collins with vogue

Petra Collins has been working since she was 17, and over the last 13 years she has explored many creative forms from shooting everyone under the sun to art shows to clothing lines to directing. A photographer, artist and model, Petra became known for her dreamy female lens shooting intimate moments of the teenage years in her home city of Toronto, going on to define a new generation of photographers. There are two of her projects that I want to explore: “the teenage gaze” and “24hr psycho”.

THE TEENAGE GAZE

In “the teenage gaze” by Petra Collins, she explores shared experiences of adolescences from their perspective rather than the stereotypical views, aiming for a ‘fly on the wall’ style. The intimate portraits shot from 2010-2015 takes advantage of the lighting, location, and props within the shots in order to create beautiful imagery.

Collins’ wanted to explore the juxtaposition of the early developmental stages of a girls life and her teenage years. The shift from what is labelled as period of innocence and purity, pretty dolls are shoved into her hands and tiaras placed upon her head transforms into a strange reality of catcalls and the fear that no matter how a girl decides to dress or act, she simply cannot win. If she wears makeup then she is giving into societal beauty standards and if she doesn’t, she simply won’t be pretty enough. “Pretty” is a word that girls learn to strive for before they can understand that they do not have to please anyone other than themselves in order to be beautiful.

24HR PSYCHO

“The constant battle within oneself, having to balance oppositional ideals of virgin, whore, mother. I was depressed at a very young age – mental illness runs in my family, especially on the female side… When we are angry, sad, depressed, or manic, we are immediately seen as unfeminine, or ugly, or weak”

– Petra Collins

For this project, Petra Collins wanted for women to take control of their emotions and to show that emotions should not be ladled as “negative”. It shows young women’s emotions in states of sadness and emotional suffering, moments of vulnerability then become acts of empowerment. Fragility and emotionality are emotions stereotypically associated with the female gender; Petra Collins wants to emphasize these characteristics and wants to show the world what it means to be a girl who lives adolescence today, constantly in contact with social media. These images, deeply intimate and private, face the complex question of a generation that does not know the world and people, if not through a screen.

ANALYSE