Julia Fullerton-Batten's Teenage Stories

Julia was born in Bremen, Germany to a German mother and an English father. The family then moved to the United States, and back to Germany, before moving to England in 1986. Julia now lives in London.
Julia has travelled extensively, spending several weeks at a time in such countries as China, India, Vietnam, Chile, Australia, New Zealand etc. These visits enabled her to accumulate award-winning picture material as well as gain an insight into different cultures.

When asked about her series, Teenage Stories, this is what she said to influx:
The idea was to create pictures that reflect my own meandering childhood memories of my sisters and me growing up in Pennsylvania and then in rural Germany. When I think back to how the three of us spent our time drifting through life I realize that the older we get the harder it is to spend time this way, every day seems to have an agenda, a set of objectives that must be achieved.

The starting point for most of these pictures were observations I made of myself, or my sisters, during these wonderful years.
I wanted to capture something of this "child-like ability" to get lost in dreams and fantasies in these pictures.

As soon as I saw the first of the miniature village I knew it was the perfect backdrop for this series. The strangeness of these environments perfectly echoes the strangeness I feel when I raid my own memories looking for events that I can turn into pictures.

However it often leaves me wondering whether I'm glamorizing my own childhood and if so then why? Recently I went back to our family home in Pennsylvania, the first visit since we left in 1980. It didn't seem possible that my beautiful childhood memories had been born in this bland suburban wasteland.

The girls I photograph in these miniature villages interact with them much like children interact with their real surroundings, living inside their own dreams and fantasies rather than living in a specific house on a specific street. In their minds they can be giants moving through our world whilst always remaining separate to it, cocooned in their own dream like existence.

Made in 2005, the series was awarded with the Applied Arts Photography Award in Toronto and second place in the Prix de la Photographie Paris (px3).

Teenage Stories was shown in a group show at Jenkins Johnson Gallery.
For more info on Julia Fullerton-Batten, check her home page.