Minor Threat
CHARLIE WHITE

This essay reconsiders the social and aesthetic complications within the presentation and reception of youth as a photographic subject. From Lewis Carroll's staged portraits of Alice Liddell to Annie Leibovitz's forthcoming pictures of Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair, the pre-teen and teen subject in photography have generated excitement, repulsion, and ongoing debate. In the present era of youth-driven image content, how has the role of the adolescent shifted in popular image culture, especially now that youth has come to author itself? Conversely, how has photography been implicated in the production of such imagery as Western culture becomes more restrictive—particularly in response to the growing plasticity of the image and its more fluid modes of dissemination? Neither a social science piece nor a historical overview, this text will focus on the image of the pre-teen and teen in photographic practice, while reviewing the popular currents that have effectively controlled the production and exhibition of such works.