Within the realm of visual art, the bedroom has become a motif of the relationship between interiority and exteriority. Psychologically the bedroom is an intimate and complex space, while structurally it’s incredibly mundane and orthodox. It’s at once individual and universal; sui generis and ordinary. Of her pioneering 90s series In My Room: Teenagers in their Bedrooms, Adrienne Salinger said that “adults hide a lot of shit in the closet. But a teenager only has that 12 by 12 feet. Everything has to fit in there: the past and the future,” and many photographers have since made similar appraisals. Adorning the walls and surfaces of these 12 by 12 feet spaces are clues of coming of age — stuffed animals from childhood sit alongside journals chronicling teenage angst and college coursework. Adolescent bedrooms are perhaps the best visual archive of growing up. Arann McCormack’s series I Never Promised You a Rose Garden captures the shades and subtleties of girlhood via snapshots of 20-something year olds’ bedrooms. The seven photo strong series spotlights these spaces and their inhabitants, providing an aperture into the nuanced world of girlhood. I became acquainted with Arann’s project having seen it shortlisted for the Allied Irish Banks Portrait Prize 2024. Likewise, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden mesmerised me with its unapologetic portrayal of young women.
“In immersing herself in her subjects’ girlhood, she felt her own being validated”
Arann is still trying to pinpoint the origin of her fascination with female adolescence. Although she recognises that “it of course blooms quite naturally from [her] own life and trying to understand things that have happened in the past”, she understands that girlhood’s thematic allure goes beyond her own experiences. Not totally knowing where her interest comes from is something Arann embraces rather than resents. The way she sees it, uncertainty means she’s not out of the rough herself yet. She enthuses that “it’s quite exciting to know that each day I’m gaining greater insight into why I’m so interested in these things”. The project also affected a catharsis for Arann: in immersing herself in her subjects’ girlhood, she felt her own being validated. She reflects that the series “made [her] feel a bit more human”. “I’m still experiencing my own girlhood so it presently helps me to be less judgmental of my own journey as well. Less judgmental of the choices I’m making.” Bedrooms often hold space for our human messiness and imperfections, shutting them away from society’s judgments. Arann’s photos, however, reconfigure these blemishes as treasures.
Conceptually, the project is an extension of a previous one. Its predecessor, Bliss, was likewise concerned with physical liminal space, although they were bathrooms. “I did a big piece of work on bathrooms because I consider them a liminal space,” Arann says. “You’re just passing through.” Bliss looked beyond the bathroom’s reputation as an unremarkable room and lingered a little longer on its liminality, ultimately seeing the value of in-between and transitional spaces. Exploration of physical liminality gave way to exploration of psychological liminality and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden manifests these emotional fluxes. For Arann, both bedrooms and adolescence embody liminality physically and psychologically. “The notes on the wall, the posters and the photos. These are things we’re experiencing and moving through.”
When asked about artistic etiquette and how she navigated such intimate settings, Arann explained that she tactically shot friends of hers. With this being said, the honour of being invited into such private spaces was not lost on her. Arann explains that “we chatted before, during and after the shoot. It was very much a collaborative style and just like hanging out with each other which was brilliant.” The organic dynamic between subject and photographer underpins each portrait, producing an effect of authenticity and unpretentiousness.
Visual artists like Petra Collins and Justine Kurland are synonymous with coming of age photography. Knowingly or unknowingly any creative adolescent girl will have encountered their work in a photobook or on Pinterest amidst a growing pains induced deepdive. Although she appreciates this tradition, Arann’s participation in it begins and ends with the fact she is a girl, shooting girls. The series departs from the canonical style by focusing on a conceptual struggle. She explains: “I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t taking photos of sad girls in their sad rooms. I wanted to celebrate resilience as well.” Moreover, Arann’s pieces are posed whereas Collins and Kurland’s work adopts a more fly on the wall perspective. Arann says that she adores that style, but for I Never Promised You a Rose Garden she wanted greater intensity and intentionality. The project is also indebted to non photographic material, namely music and Andrea Arnold films. Arann’s photos are imbued with similar rawness.
To the question “How did you balance the staticity that is inherent to photography with communicating a narrative?” Arann responded that the story was innate to her images. In fact, excessive interference in the bedrooms would have compromised the authenticity she so cherishes. She finds the true narrative to shine through sans inordinate staging.
“Posters, books and beauty products appear as elemental to growing up as starting puberty or going to secondary school”
Although on a compositional level each bedroom is aesthetically distinct, there are some token items that recur across the images. Posters, books and beauty products appear as elemental to growing up as starting puberty or going to secondary school. Arann made the same observation. “When I was looking back at the images there were a few things visually repeating themselves. It was a nice sign of us all being so connected and we don’t even know it.” If these repetitions make the photographs seem more choreographed then so be it, Arann views these patterns as testaments to sisterhood. Similarly, Arann wanted markers of childhood to be left in the photos as “these items represent different points of time and they feed into these spaces’ liminality. They will leave and new ones will take their place one day. Nothing is ever fixed and that reflects the people in these spaces.”
Wrapping up our conversation, we turned to the text accompanying the photos. Journals, notes and letters featured heavily in Arann’s own teenage years and decorated her bedroom walls. Within her photography, she views writing as a remedy for the silence enacted by still images. She gave her subjects the prompt: “If you could speak to your younger self, what would you say?” and her responses ranged from the defiant “I am not what’s been done to me” to the introspective “You’re gonna love dancing one day. Nobody’s actually watching.” Ultimately Arann likes the boldness and confrontation of these musings. She concluded: “I thought it was quite striking having these young women looking into the lens and having their own voice right beneath it. It was almost quite stand-offish, in an empowering way.”
“A lineage of girlhood on camera”
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden evokes a lineage of girlhood on camera, at the same time asserting its uniqueness and divergence from tradition much like the concurrently individual and collective stories Arann endeavours to tell. This project and others by Arann can be found on instagram @arannmc and https://arannmccormack.cargo.site/.
