prev / next

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Seven, a photographic series I began in 2009, focuses on children at this age. It was inspired by a conversation with a friend about making portraits that mark specific notable times in children’s lives. Shortly after, my son, Eli, turned seven and he quickly changed in noticeable ways. Seven is a turning point, the first step out of childhood.

Initially I photographed forty-one seven-year-olds, most of whom I knew. When I first exhibited these pictures, I decided I would revisit my subjects in ten years, at age seventeen.

Seventeen is a transitional developmental year. It is often the senior year of high school, a time of reflecting back, and looking forward in anticipation of the next chapter. For many of these seventeen-year-old subjects, it was also a year in the time of Covid, an additional transitional event in our collective lives.

Like much of my work, Seven/17 unfurls as a slow record of the race of time. The twin portraits of the same young person, separated by years, allows us to witness time passing. It provides a glimpse of an individual using the unnatural sliver of photographic time. Photography’s nature, to record the world using a mixture of light and chemistry (or light and digital code) in all of its varied forms, never gets old.