“Expectations of Adolescence” is a ten-year project documenting the lives of my cousin, Julia, and my half-sister, Katie, as they’ve grown from adolescent girls into young women. The project provided me with a new perspective on the difference in the ways we all fit in with different parts of our families. For me, it is looking into a life that may have been mine had my parents not divorced when I was a young girl and may have had the same opportunities these young women have had in their young lives to date.

The project was photographed around two environments. One is the house of our well-heeled grandparents and the other is on Round Island in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. The project documents the lives of the two girls during their sometimes-awkward evolution from adolescence to womanhood, and captures the simple moments in their search for their own identity. We see a gangly young Katie dancing in preparation for her jazz recital in Grandad’s driveway and later as a confident woman staring back at us in the hallway. The images provide a conduit in which we can recall our own development from young children into adults.