Willow Borain, Girlhood18 Images
“We were naughty,” says Willow Borain, who recently rediscovered a series of negatives she’d taken when she was 15 years old. Ten years on and the Cape Town-based documentary photographer shares her nostalgic images in a retrospective series entitled Girlhood. Reminding us of what the world looks like through the eyes of a teenager, Girlhood is raw and unfiltered, nostalgic and anxious.
Shooting on film began out of convenience. Borain was given a film camera in her early teens by her mother – also a photographer. Soon falling in love with the process, the camera quickly became an extension of her person. She subsequently felt inspired to document everything that surrounded her, including all the defining moments of her adolescence.
Our teen years are a blip in time that passes us by all too quickly, and yet they have repercussions over the following decades. The rest of our days are haunted by the certitude that we will never be young again. We long for the parties of our youth; for the early-stage freedom, the rebellion and naivety, even for the heartbreak. But in the whirlwinds of uncertainty and change, it’s easy to forget the hardships associated with being 15.
I think we romanticise [girlhood] – the wild teenager, the Lolita trope, the manic pixie party girl – Willow Borain
“I think we romanticise it [girlhood] – the wild teenager, the Lolita trope, the manic pixie party girl,” says Borain. “We don’t get to see the manic pixie alone in her room at night; we don’t get to see Lolita all grown up, figuring out what’s next in life.” Amid ‘the boys, the bongs and the braces’, Borain’s photos occupy these liminal spaces. They’re a record of the true and the tangible; they’re snippets of the fleeting moments that play out behind closed doors.
As part of her reflections on those teen years, Borain felt the urge to rewatch the cult classics of our adolescence, such as Skins and Thirteen. But her photos show us the bits we don’t get to see in the movies. “What is often overlooked in storytelling is the loneliness and isolation of it all,” she says. “Nobody prepared us for the mental confusion and emotional mess we experience. And, when we’re in it, we think we’re alone in it, but it’s universal.”
“Looking through my old diaries in tandem with rediscovering this series made me feel like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was be a 15-year-old girl,” says Borain, who now works in a film lab in Cape Town. “I was often told being that age would be hard but no one ever told me why.”
Girlhood certainly isn’t easy, so full of paradox and contradiction. As we figure out who we are, who our friends are, how we view the world, while we begin to think about the rest of our lives, we’re expected to behave like adults but we’re not always treated like them. “You’re in this limbo with one foot in childhood, the other in adulthood; no one really knows where they stand,” she says.
“It’s messy, the in-between space of adolescence. We had some sort of idea of how the world worked, the kind that some kids just have to learn at a young age, but we were also naive.” To be a girl, to be a woman, is to be inseparable from systemic gendered risk. Girls and women must learn to navigate this from a young age. “I remember waiting at the bus stop in my school uniform while being honked at by truck drivers,” the photographer recalls. “Both a child and a sexual object, but I felt like neither.”
I remember waiting at the bus stop in my school uniform while being honked at by truck drivers. Both a child and a sexual object, but I felt like neither – Willow Borain
In the first tastes of freedom, we experiment and try new things, mindless of the possible repercussions. “I didn’t know it at the time, I thought the drugs and all were just coming-of-age thing, like a right of passage,” she shares, now almost two years sober. “But this was the age I became dependent on substances.”
If Borain at 15 could see herself at 25, what would she think? “I think my younger self would be utterly confused by the woman I am today. I had a lot of unrealistic expectations of what I’d like to be as an adult, and how much I would have accomplished by this age,” she says. “The parts she would recognise in me would definitely be the rebellion – that fire hasn’t died just yet.” And although we don’t get a do-over, not dissimilar to shooting analog, what, if she could, would she do differently? “I’d treat my mum better.”
The world changes and so does our perspective. These photos offer Borain the rare opportunity to go back in time, and she welcomes us with her. “If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be: trust your instincts. More than you trust men, at least.”
Visit the gallery above for a closer look.
