The “To Be Thirteen” exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum takes visitors down memory lane and captures the turbulence of being an adolescent.
Photographer and mother Betsy Schneider took off across North America in 2012 to document the journeys of over 200 13-year-olds through photography. The gallery also includes 51-minute film, titled “Triskaidekaphobia”, meaning the fear or avoidance of the number thirteen.
Schneider said her own motherhood was an inspiration for the project, but was not the only muse. She also described fear and anxiety as a factor in her decision to begin her work.
“Usually when something upsets me or makes me think, I try to think about how I can convert it into art,” said Schneider. When she received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, she decided thirteen-year-olds would be the focus of her work.
With the help of her daughter and friends, Schneider began connecting with children to collect portraits and quotes, cautious not to pressure her subjects to give certain answers. However, she began peeling back layers of what it meant to be thirteen.
“I was nervous every time,” Schneider said. “I didn’t want to come from the perspective of, ‘I’m an adult looking for dysfunction’.”
Walking into the project armed with her experience of motherhood, Schneider thought she knew how to talk to kids that age. But as the project went on, she said she felt even though it was rewarding, it could be difficult.
“I made some pretty amazing discoveries,” Schneider said. “Some of them opened up. Others, I could barely get a word out of them.”
Some of the 13-year-olds who did open up talked about struggling with mental conditions in school, religion, complications with bullying and gender.
Despite being immersed in the life of 13-year-olds for several years, Schneider found that as she worked she didn’t have much time for self-reflection until after the project.
“Since the show went up I’ve been talking I’ve started to think a lot more about what kind of things shaped me then,” she said.
She hopes her art will move people in a similar way, as it did some of her friends all the way back from middle school.
“I turned thirteen again,” she said. “It’s connected me back to myself, it’s made me more compassionate for who I was at that age.”
For Kayleigh Roach the exhibit was a walk down memory lane.
“One of the astounding features in the gallery was the diversity of the children photographed,” Roach said. Some look very young and childish while others could appear to be years older. She said it was hard to believe they were all the same age.
Roach felt the exhibit captured the age perfectly and reminded her of what it was like to be that age.
“That dichotomy…I guess it’s more of a universal experience than I thought,” she said.
Schneider said a reoccurring problem she found as she interviewed the 13-year-olds was the more prominent stress they face compared to different generations and wondered if it could be the result of more social media, and children becoming aware of the outside world at a younger age.
Catherine Quinn said she enjoyed how the show allowed her to reflect on what she was like at age thirteen and recalled how awkward it was.
Despite the problems Schneider noticed during her project, she is optimistic about this upcoming generation.
“I’m really hopeful,” she said. “I think adolescents are overstimulated, I think they have issues with screens and attention, but I also think there is a real sense of connectedness to the world and to each other.”
Schneider hopes to focus more on the concept of identity in the future through the film. “To Be Thirteen” will be open until Sunday, November 11 in the Phoenix Art Museum.
Contact the reporter at ajcutler@asu.edu
