2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageAesthetics of Teenage Life
Jill Frank
Saturday, March 21 - 10:00AM to 11:00AM
Valdosta
This body of work examines youth culture as both spectacle and symptom—an entry point into broader questions of power, identity, and representation in contemporary America. I document social rituals such as dances, games, classes, and other places in which performances of identity are legible. What what often appears as simple fun or social conquest can offer insight into the forces that are shaping American politics today.
Through staged and documentary portraits, I explore how young people perform for one another, and for the camera. Many images are made in unexpectedly quiet moments immediately before or after acts of social engagement, where the boundary between subject and spectacle collapses. These portraits try to interrogate the role of photography in creating and sustaining these rituals, reframing moments of ephemeral play with the material weight of formal portraiture.
I work in environments often considered overly familiar or cliche, using visual strategies associated with "high" culture: ie: scale, fidelity, and display, to elevate and destabilize what is typically dismissed. My goal is not simply to critique representation, but to test how images function in circulation: how repetition erodes meaning, how posing becomes a mode of self-definition, and how even the most casual selfie is an act of cultural production.
This work reflects on how images retain power in a saturated visual landscape, and considers the pose as a form of meaningful expression.
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