In her series “Spitting Image,” which is on display at Crush Curatorial through May 13th, Eva O’Leary photographs teen-age girls examining their own reflections. The mirror they use is a two-way; O’Leary positioned her camera behind it, so that we see the girls caught in the act of looking. The photos are alarmingly intimate, unguarded, and open. Think of them as the anti-selfie, that punishingly idealized form. Here, each sitter’s individuality constitutes her beauty. There are pimples and oily skin, plucked eyebrows and lip fuzz, lipstick and mascara as well as bare faces. Some of O’Leary’s subjects seem intrigued, even excited, by what they see. Others seem distressed, disgusted, perplexed. Childhood has been shed; these are new faces, but they won’t be theirs for long. The photos are shot against a deep-blue backdrop, like that of a yearbook photo, as if to remind the sitters that adolescence, too, is something they’ll graduate from. Get a good look while it lasts.
What Teen-Age Girls See When They Look in the Mirror | The New Yorker