The Girl Project

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Liz Hagen, the owner of Venetian Red – a fellow artist, writer, blogger and neighbor! The e-mail told me about the Girl Project, the idea of Kate Engelbrecht, a photographer, who is sending disposable cameras to girls in the US, collecting the photos, and then curating them for an exhibit/installation. Humans have long been fascinated with female adolescence. The promise and hope behind their eyes… the purity and romanticism youth represents, the razor thin line between immaturity, maturity, innocence and rebellion. (The Girl Project Statement)


In today’s world it not only piques our curiosity—it feeds our insatiable need for drama. The supposed lives of teenage girls have become modern entertainment. Our ideas about them grow from what we read about Lindsay Lohan in The New York Post or what we saw on last week’s episode of The Hills. We learn what they like, buy and wear and what they believe, think and do… and just as quickly as we get our fix, we fail to understand the complexity and truth behind the very group we obsess on.

With the hope of reintroducing them to us, The Girl Project explores the lives of American teenage girls through images they create themselves. Using the raw, honest qualities of photography, girls reveal their self-perceptions in a daring act of intimacy- both behind and before the camera.

—Kate Engelbrecht, The Girl Project statement

If you know some girls who might be interested or people who work with girls who might be interested in learning more, here's the website and blog information.

www.thegirlproject.org
http://thegirlprojectblog.blogspot.com/

courtesty of Liz Hagen: http://venetianred.net/

All images @ The Girl Project