Karen Marshall

Between Girls: A Passage To Womanhood is a complex visual study about friendship among women. The work explores the emotional bonding between girls at sixteen and their identities as women today.

Between Girls follows a group of middleclass New York City women from age 16 to 40 between the years 1985 and 2010. It contemplates women’s identities and their roles in contemporary culture, and examines the impact that collective histories and symbols have on society. By focusing on the communal rituals of coming of age, it considers how these rites of passage hold historic symbolism in most women’s lives, regardless of their class and background.

FUNDING SPONSORSHIP
Since 1999, Between Girls has been part of the Sponsorship Program at The New York Foundation for The Arts, which has provided non-profit status and funding opportunities. This program has offered Between Girls the opportunity to solicit individual contributors and foundations during the various stages of project development. Between Girls; A Passage To Womanhood can be found on NYFA’s newly created Artspire website which offers potential donors free access to view and contribute funding at anytime. This project continues to be indebted to a community of supporters whose belief has helped sustain its development over its long life.

www.artspire.org

Please contact Karen Marshall about the book project, exhibition, or about licensing or using excerpts from Between Girls: A Passage to Womanhood in collaboration with with other programming. Marshall is also available to speak at your event, symposium or conference.

THE BOOK PROJECT
The book dummy (11×13, 135 pages, 110 photographs) combines 25 years of photography with text from interviews with six women about their thoughts and memories of time spent together and its effect on how they see themselves in the world today. Their emergence as individual women with diverse perspectives is central. This is not about who they are in the world, but how they see themselves in relationship to their transformation from girls, to young women, into womanhood.

A seventh woman, Molly, was hit by a car and killed at the age of 17. This heartbreaking event continues to act as a metaphor for her friends who, decades later, still grapple with the death of a principal member of their group.

Friendships formed during this pivotal age are milestones in many people’s lives, making Between Girls: A Passage To Womanhood a thought provoking subject to a vast audience, women and men of all ages. Young people will relate to the imagery, and parents and adults reflecting back on their own experiences will find relevance in the trajectory of Between Girls . Academics in fields such as psychology, sociology, gender and women studies, and documentary and photography studies will find Between Girls a creative resource.

Further, today’s cyber culture has altered the way in which communities develop, changing the formative relationships established in adolescence and, making this topic even more pertinent than it was in 1985. As a new generation contemplates the significance of physical time spent together, Between Girls captures the nuance of these symbolic friendships, and their meaningful place in women’s lives.

THE EXHIBITION
Between Girls: A Passage To Womanhood has also been developed into a multi-media exhibition for museums using audio and video along with black and white silver gelatin images.

The installation was first exhibited at the OK Centrum for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria in 2008 and is part of the ArtBase at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition is perfect for University museum as it can easily interface with academic programming and encourage community involvement.

Exhibition Details:
This combined media installation has been designed both to be viewed in its entirety, or in excerpted sections that stand on their own.

Video Panel
A video panel acts as introductory project text, introducing and articulating some of the important elements of the work. This will be done through excerpts of interviews with the subjects themselves.

A Selection of 16×20 Silver Gelatin Images from the High School Years
The initial photographs taken in 1985-87 ponder thoughts about women’s identities and their roles in contemporary society. Their archetypal dimension
illuminate the impact that collective histories and symbols have on society. Focusing on teenage girls, and the communal rituals of coming of age these photographs capture these rites of passage that are symbolic in most women’s lives, no matter what their class and background typifies.

This group of monochromatic images seen in mats on the wall capture this fleeting time period. (12-30 Images)

Video Interviews in a Black Box Studio
(Option One) Seven Screens are placed next to each other on a wall.
(Option Two) A viewing room with 4-7 walls to project on.

Present day interviews with four of the woman will be seen projected on separate screens. It allows each woman her own place to speak for herself and tell her own story. At times, the interviews will be seen together, with women speaking over one another. At other times an interview will be seen alone. The women were asked the same questions about their thoughts and memories of time spent together and its affect on how they see themselves in the world today. Their emergence as individual women with diverse perspectives is central to this section. This is not about who they are in the world, but how they see themselves in relationship to their transformation from girls, to young women, into womanhood.

Two women were not available for these interviews but are still part of this grouping.

The seventh woman in the study, Molly, accidentally lost her life at the age of 17. Her tragic death, continues to act as a metaphor, her friends still unravel this event decades later. A screen for Molly will be off to the side and will include photographs from and scrolling text.

Triptych Panels
Sequential panels of each woman articulate central thoughts about the process of documentation over the past 23 years.

Each Triptych is a grouping of (3) 16×20 Silver Gelatin Prints mounted together to form 16×60 panels. Shown in a progressive sequence, each woman is seen at 16, in their 20’s and in their 30’s.

Included are photographs of Molly, who died at the age of 17. Her panel pointedly spans ten months of documentation.

A Table of Books
A dozen self-published books sit on a table. A large selection of images from the twenty-five year archive form a collection of books that explore various narrative ideas. Through editing, sequencing and cataloging, the viewer can experience a concert of images while pondering the language of photography.

Audio
Believing in the powerful partnership of verbal communication to underscore still images, this audio recording captures the musings and observations of these girls when they were twenty. This audio segment is an excerpt from these original recordings. Heard through a Sound Dome, it adds an additional dimension to the contemplation of the books and the triptychs on the wall mounted in front of the table.

Local communities can easily interface with The Between Girls Exhibition , hosting complimentary exhibitions and educational programming.