Coming of Age in Wonderland - Portraits of Teenage Bermuda

On an Island 1500 miles from the closest landfall, Bermuda’s teenagers come of age as all teenagers do – but with a difference. Here on “The Rock”, teenagers are heir to a uniquely split personality: on the one hand intensely local and intimate and secure, the stuff of their home; on the other intensely drawn to the exotic lure of everywhere-but-here, the stuff of their dreams. Over the course of the year 2015, I spent three months exploring Bermuda schools, clubs, army recruit camps, churches, fast food joints, sports fields, and parishes, making portraits of young people displaying themselves in all their contradictory glory -- awkward and brave, shy and bold – against a backdrop that would strike any non-Bermudian as a slice of paradise. But even in paradise, adolescence is complicated. In these photos we see teenagers simultaneously wedded to the tyranny of cool and rebelling against it, trying to disappear into the sameness of belonging and stand out as unique all at once. Like teenagers everywhere, again, but not quite. There is a something in these portraits of Bermuda’s teenagers that is as still and poignant as the beautiful island that chains and sustains them both. Such is coming of age in Wonderland.