{"id":1408910,"date":"2026-01-23T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1408910"},"modified":"2026-01-23T12:28:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:28:00","slug":"la-girls-these-photos-capture-the-dizzying-flux-of-adolescence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1408910","title":{"rendered":"LA girls: These photos capture the dizzying flux of adolescence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Flesh That Says Yes<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Gallery \/ 29 images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cLos Angeles is a contradiction of awe and terror. Freeways as monoliths, misbehaving faultlines. We move through the city rather than with it, a permanent existential playground.\u201d For Lucia Farrow<\/a> and Maya Spangler<\/a>, these contradictions form the backdrop of their latest photo series and exhibition, <\/span>The Flesh That Says <\/span><\/em>at One Trick Pony gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The intimate series traces the experience of growing up in their hometown, and the uneasy, suspended space between identities. \u201cWe investigate ourselves and the city as a state of becoming, romanticising the chaos of ruination for its refusal to provide whole answers. We are constantly at odds with feeling pure and abject, young and old, free and trapped,\u201d they describe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving through these contradictions, the photos place their bodies in a range of positions: arched across bathroom floors, bare feet prancing around a kindling firepit, slumped against the seabed as waves crash over them. These configurations are set against shots of the city. \u201cLos Angeles was just as much a part of the exhibition as our bodies were,\u201d they say. \u201cIt was our playground, a site of ritual where the images came about.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"The<\/span><\/span>
Photography Lucia Farrow and Maya Spangler<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Although they come from different practices \u2013 Farrow from a fine art background, Spangler from narrative and fashion photography \u2013 the project converges around shared touchpoints of ruination, abjection and explorations of womanhood. Their first collaboration began in 2024, when they moved into a Los Angeles apartment together. Though both were part of the city\u2019s creative melting pot, they\u2019d grown up on opposite sides of town and barely knew each other. \u201cAt the time, we both felt pretty raw, lost, and unsure, and we ended up needing each other in ways we didn\u2019t expect,\u201d they recall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe work comes from our shared space,\u201d they explain. \u201cSometimes we can go days without saying much, but we still feel each other\u2019s presence, and it feels balancing. Other times it\u2019s chaotic \u2013 full of noise, clothes everywhere, packages, artwork, too many cups in the sink. A lot of the work lives in small moments: being close to someone, watching yourself exist, noticing how your body reacts before you have words for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Their apartment became a stand-in for the series\u2019 emotional core, embodied by a nest sculpture they built from sticks foraged along the LA River and in Griffith Park. \u201cWe spray-painted it, added personal items, jewellery, little trinkets, the way birds decorate their nests. It felt connected to becoming adults and building something for ourselves, but also to the lightness of being younger, building forts, playing, making spaces just to exist in \u2013 this childlike emotionality we feel,\u201d they explain.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"The<\/span><\/span>
The Nest<\/span>Photography Lucia Farrow and Maya Spangler<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The project takes its title from a line in Paul \u00c9luard\u2019s poem <\/span>Liberty<\/span><\/em>, encountered in David Cronenberg\u2019s <\/a><\/span>Maps to the Stars<\/span><\/em>. \u201cWhen taken out of context, the poem fit so well into the film even though in reality it was about freedom, and written during the German occupation of France,\u201d they explain. \u201cI think we were drawn to the idea of the body responding instinctively, almost devotionally, the same way that Cronenberg was.\u201d This influence shows up in the framing of body parts within the images, where the artists\u2019 bodies are indistinguishable from one another. Their bodies are rarely shot in full, and their faces are often obscured by hair or veiled by materials.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This sense of devotion threads throughout the series: in the submissive poses the subjects inhabit, the baptismal wash of water over skin, and a rosary strung from Adderall pills. It\u2019s a deliberate play on the pseudo-spirituality often ascribed to LA, and one that\u2019s increasingly entangled with the online world. \u201cWe were interested in the way that these aesthetics mirrored a kind of paganism and site of ritual. The ceremonies of a girlhood spent online, and the internet girl as a kind of online shaman,\u201d they explain.<\/span><\/p>\n

The collation of the images into an exhibition was an experimental process for the artists. \u201cThis project wasn\u2019t really about single images standing on their own, but about how the images sit together. There\u2019s almost an impossibility to curate an exhibition of images now, and for them to feel alive, since each of us sees about 2000 images a day online,\u201d they explain. It\u2019s this desensitisation that led the artists to paint on the work, adding to the already chaotic layering and collaging that mimics the vertigo of coming of age. The first iteration of the project just culminated in a show at One Trick Pony gallery in Los Angeles, but the project remains ongoing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"The<\/span><\/span>
Photography Lucia Farrow and Maya Spangler<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Source URL: https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/art-photography\/article\/69468\/1\/photos-lucia-maya-spangler-contradictions-girlhood-la-los-angeles-adolescence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Flesh That Says Yes Gallery \/ 29 images \u201cLos Angeles is a contradiction of awe and terror. Freeways as monoliths, misbehaving faultlines. We move through the city rather than with it, a permanent existential playground.\u201d For Lucia Farrow and Maya Spangler, these contradictions form the backdrop of their latest photo series and exhibition, The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-1408910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-dazeddigital-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1408910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}