Teenage ladies making TikToks: Philippa James’s greatest {photograph} | Photography

This began as a challenge with my daughter and her mates, who’re all a part of the smartphone era. They had been 14 years previous on the time and I wished to be taught extra in regards to the relationship they’d with their cell phones. In 2022, a study by Ofcom confirmed that 9 out of 10 youngsters owned one by the point they reached the age of 11, and that 91% of them used video platforms, messaging apps and social media by the age of 12. I spoke to my daughter and her mates about how they use their telephones and the unfavourable fame that surrounds youngsters and their screens. They instructed me the positives in addition to the negatives, corresponding to how social media can increase confidence in addition to knock it down.

I requested if I may {photograph} them. There was little or no path from me and – quite than photographing them in a managed portraiture type, as I’d often have achieved – I merely noticed them doing their factor. The power was excessive: they moved so quick, dancing to quick music reels, filming one another, laughing, scrolling, chatting, taking selfies, and again to creating TikTookay dances once more. It was so hectic, I struggled to maintain up. This picture, known as TikTookay, got here out of that session. I discovered this composition and requested Lucy to shortly search for at me. I had about two seconds earlier than the second was damaged they usually moved on to the subsequent factor. As a portrait photographer, you get a sense about sure pictures, and I knew this was the one.

Back within the edit, I mirrored on how the ladies use their telephones as a type of visible communication, or because the theorist Nathan Jurgenson calls it, “social photography”. This means the results of the {photograph} is social, quite than an object as it could be in conventional pictures. Social pictures is much less about making a doc or archive, and extra about taking an image or video and sharing it, mainly having a visible dialog.

The extra time I spent with the ladies, the extra I realized in regards to the darker aspect of their telephones – the sexism and misogyny on-line. I shared the challenge as a work-in-progress exhibition in Oxford, and I labored carefully with different focus teams of teenage ladies who shared their experiences of on-line sexism and sexual harassment. I used to be shocked at among the issues I realized. The last challenge consists of pictures of their handwritten testimonials.

To additional my analysis, I used to be studying activists Laura Bates and Soma Sara’s work – and the unique title of the challenge was No Big Deal, knowledgeable by Sara, who says sexual harassment occurs so usually it turns into seen as “no big deal”. But because the challenge progressed, I modified it to Once a Slag, which refers to a TikTookay soundbite my daughter performed to me. The acceptance and possession of the lyrics made me really feel protecting and pissed off as a mom and feminist. It’s not a cushty title, however the shock issue is necessary to get consideration and lift consciousness.

This {photograph} has many layers, nevertheless it’s additionally putting. It is gorgeous and alluring and I feel it has captured a beautiful second. It’s a celebration of the enjoyment of girlhood, and of a bunch of ladies in their very own world. And identical to social pictures, these teenage years are ephemeral. In this picture they’re having a lot enjoyable collectively – it’s so necessary to seize this confidence in a secure place.

This picture has additionally made me very aware of the triangle of three gazes: Lucy gazing on the viewer, performing for the digital camera but in addition confronting the viewer with that look, that angle. Then my gaze because the mom and the photographer – which modifications the extra analysis I do on the topic. Then the gaze of the viewer, who is likely to be transported again in time to their very own teenage years. I discover the strain between these actually difficult with this material.

The ladies within the picture are actually 17. Rather a lot has come out because it was made. People corresponding to Andrew Tate have change into extensively recognized – though the children knew all about him years earlier than us adults did – and extra not too long ago the Netflix collection Adolescence prompted large debate.

This week a mum received in contact with me and mentioned: “I need to talk to you about short skirts.” Where I sit as a mum, and the place I sit as a girl, are sometimes completely at odds. As a mum, instinctively, you wish to be protecting. But when you zoom out of it, why ought to a girl not put on what she desires? Unfortunately, younger girls as we speak are in danger, simply by having a telephone. That’s the world we don’t know as mother and father as we speak.

Philippa James’s CV

Born: Bath, 1978
Trained BA in artwork and transferring picture at Maidstone, Kent (2000); MA in pictures at Falmouth (2023)
Influences “Rineke Dijkstra, Miranda July, Lynne Ramsay, Tracey Emin, Abigail Heyman, Cindy Sherman, Samantha Morton, Catherine McCormack, the film Short Cuts by Robert Altman, and Lisa Taddeo’s book Three Women.”
High level “Being selected last year for the Taylor Wessing portrait prize and exhibiting at the National Portrait Gallery. Receiving funding from Arts Council England to develop my practice – it’s given me the confidence to develop my visual language. And winning LensCulture’s Emerging Talent award.”
Low level “In 2020 I was publicly criticised for including a trans women in my very first personal project, 100 Women of Oxford, and protesters threatened to sabotage the exhibition. I learned a lot from that experience about responsibility, representation, and the emotional weight of photographing real people.”
Top tip “Keep making work, reflect on what you made, then make more work. Photography can look easy, but it’s hard – and consistency really matters.”