CURATORIAL NOTE

In contemporary photography, girls and young women are often shown in relation to cultural forces outside of themselves — towering pressures like beauty standards, consumerism, or the masculine gaze. These struggles are ubiquitous, and it’s an important work for artists to confront them. But feminine identity in these depictions, perhaps by accident, becomes defined by its relationship to external powers.

Kristen Joy Emack portrays girlhood with a subtle but distinctly different anchoring. She approaches the four girls in Cousins with a positive vision, with respect for their growing souls. The girls are presented as themselves, with reverence and very little artifice. The quiet, open nature of their self-presentation is not rooted in turmoil, boys, performance, imitation, or even giddy joy, and this feels unusual. Maybe, we are not used to seeing photographs of girls just being.

The cousins’ physical closeness reads as foundational security. Their embraces act like puzzle pieces, rearranging themselves into elegant formations as we move through the photographs. Emack’s choice to make the whole series in black and white strips out distraction, focusing further in on their gestures of connection.

Although the girls are most often pictured together, Emack includes a few individual portraits in the series. One of the girls is shown cocooned in ear muffs with her eyes closed. Astonishingly, the circular shape of her irises and traces of the whites of the eye appear visible beneath her eyelids, as if her eyes were simultaneously open and closed. Emack may have used a long exposure to catch the eyes in motion, or it may be a recipe of illusion, made from shadow, contour, and light. Either way, the effect is startling once it’s seen.

Emack notes that the cousins often make an intentional decision to look directly into the camera. The girl in Earmuffs has gone inward to a deeply personal place. But we are not voyeurs of the moment. As we gaze at her, she is simultaneously looking back at us. The gaze emerging from under glittering lids is both soft and strong. Confidence is found residing underneath serenity, with both of those qualities strengthened over time in the stable bond between cousins.