This photo set is a collection of shots that I have taken over the past year in which young girls are the focus. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we express femininity in our youth and how that changes as we grow older. Remembering my own experience growing up, reflecting on how I’ve changed since then, and thinking about how these girls will also change, I am caught between feelings of excitement and fear. As a girl looking through the lens at younger girls I can’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia and longing for my own childhood, before my gender took on different implications. Being a girl used to mean dressing like your sister, getting covered in sand at the lake, and playing basketball. Life was not complicated by inferiority, self-consciousness or convoluted relationships with both others and yourself. These photos are a way for me to make permanent something as impermanent as age.