Sofia Cieslar, Nostalgic Negatives: A 1.5-Year Ode to Teenage Transitions (DOCO 2024)

This series of analogue photographs capture a journey of self-discovery during an extremely turmoils and high-pressure period: your late teens and early twenties. The collection spans 1.5 years of my own adolescence, and follows the same close friends as they foster each other’s development of identity. The choice of film as a medium allowed me to document the warmth of these fleeting memories in their truest form. At the start of this transition, the subjects’ faces are indiscernible and amongst chaos. This reflects the feeling of being lost in the constant movement of life. 1.5 years later, the subjects intimately converse amongst a muted and peaceful environment.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.