Side Effects
Monday, 21 April 2014 12:49
Written by Nirvana Paz
In junior high schools, adolescents spend a large part of their time interacting with other adolescents, through processes of subjectivization, redefinition and resignification, new social requirements and even the conditions imposed by the schools. They thus fuse their adolescent condition with a means of being a student.
I worked for two years as a teacher in one of these public junior high schools, designated as a conflict school because of its location in a marginalized area and because it suffered significant problems of violence both inside and outside the school. During those years I photographed the students, seeking those identity elements that later, once the different roles that we assume during adolescence have been established, are reflected in our society, and trying to understand how these qualities explain much of our culture and idiosyncrasies. Here, adolescence is presented as a kind of metaphor for the difficulties that we face daily.
In this book, I include questionnaires completed by students regarding their vision of gender, a crucial topic since during adolescence the main particularities in this regard, both physical and conceptual, are expressed and take form. There are also some letters the pupils sent each other.