Blake Fitch has a knack for capturing moods, and what could be moodier than a tween girl? In her new photographic exhibit Expectations of Adolescence, Fitch commits passion to pixels, finding those moments in which emotions are clear as a bell as she documents the lives of two female cousins over a 10-year period.
Longing, confusion and desperate desire (perhaps at least partially fueled by hormonal chaos) are beautifully illustrated in sharp, high-definition color that takes as much advantage of backgrounds as it does of the photos’ primary subjects. Hopes and dreams are the stock-in-trade of the adolescent, and Fitch’s lens is flush with that same currency as it follows its subjects into places public and private, striving to see what they are striving to see. Her photos evoke a sensation that’s equal parts curiosity, melodrama and awkward discomfort—basically, the recipe for a young teenager.
Through June 28, Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography, 52/56 Ave. A, Turners Falls, (413) 863-0009, www.hmcp.org.
—Tom Sturm
tsturm@valleyadvocate.comblake fitch PhotoThrough June 28