My Own Teenage 1973-1977

I took these photographs from the age of about 15 to 19, the years 1973 to 1977. I processed all of the film myself either in the darkroom at Annandale High School, or in the bathroom and eventually closet-turned-darkroom at home. The few at the end, I took in Chicago where I had moved to at the age of 18 must have been processed at a lab, as I did not have a darkroom then.

These are my photography formative years, where I was fortunate to have the guidance of two mentors, Agnes Fromer my high school photography and art teacher, and Lin Oakerson who was my advisor on the yearbook photography staff. I learned so much from them not only about art, photography and process, but also about life in general, at a time when feminism was gaining momentum in the country.

Looking at these photographs, as I do often, I see my roots in street photography, portraiture, self-portraiture, intimacy, and indeed some experimentation. Many of them are from reference scans, so the quality could be better, and I hope to get to that some day. But I show them here not for form but mostly for content.