Martine Fougeron: Teen Tribe

Teen Tribe is a series of intimate portraits of Martine Fougeron s two adolescent sons and their tribe of friends growing§up in New York and France. Begun in 2004, Fougeron has followed the lives of her sons Nicolas and Adrien from the§ages of thirteen and fourteen respectively as they entered adulthood. The book pictures adolescence as a transformative§state, caught between childhood and adulthood, between the feminine and masculine, between innocence and§burgeoning self-identity. As both mother and photographer, Fougeron combines a tender transparency for her subject§with a more distanced view of the world of teenagers. Teen Tribe is a visual diary of her sons domestic lives arranged§chronologically, capturing the different rites of passage and personal challenges they encounter over time. Inspired by§Dutch paintings of domestic scenes particularly those of Vermeer, as well as by cinematic compositions, Fougeron s§work is both a sensual biography of two boys, and a depiction of the universal process of growing up to which all can§relate.§Martine Fougeron was born in Paris in 1954 and studied at Wellesley College and l Institut d Études Politiques de§Paris. For the past fourteen years she has lived with her two sons in New York. After a successful career as creative§director of a perfumery, Fougeron turned to photography, studying at the International Center of Photography in New§York. Her work on her two sons has been exhibited internationally and is held in major public and private collections§including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fougeron is a regular contributor§to The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine.