Image Courtesy of the Artist.
There is a language which exists that only women can understand. It remains largely “unspoken,” described by model and actress Taylor Jeanne Wells as one that “weaves, bobs and dances between uttered words.” You can hear it in the exchange of a knowing look across the room, a text just to check-in, silent belly-laughing in inappropriate places, a hug which lingers and squeezes just that bit tighter, as if to say: I see you and I can hear you.
It’s this quiet vernacular of what it means to live as a woman that photographer Morgan Maher so lovingly captures in her brand new book, Girls in Bed. Published with Friend Editions, Maher’s cloth bound, foil stamped offering features 75 different women in their bedrooms and other personal spaces, captured over the last five years. “Girlhood is a secret language us girls all share, and it’s one which is full of unassigned joy, purity, and freedom,” Maher explains. “And maintaining the uninhibited honesty I have held onto since my teen years has been quite difficult at times, but playing dress-up, jumping on the bed, and whispering secrets into my friends ears helps cure that pang of adulthood. It’s a visual language I’ve been building on since I was a teenager.”
Images Courtesy of the Artist.
The LA-based photographer plays with the codes of femininity, girlhood and womanhood, taking them to places that are rendered beautiful but also sexually playful and unabashed. Her models – including the likes of Rachel Sennott, Lexee Smith, Chase Sui Wonders and Isabella Elei – kneel, curl and recline on their beds, their bodies undulating and unraveling in front of the camera, gazes unflinching. “There’s an intimacy between young women that permeates throughout my work,” Maher says. Her delicate interplay of light and composition gently cradles the intricacies belonging to the stories of girlhood – a dreamscape, Maher likes to refer to as her own “girl-world.”
It’s a world which Maher has been building since she was thirteen. Self-portraits of school outfits later advanced into photographs of her friends in her basement, before evolving into images of even more girls – this time, depicted in their own homes. “The first girl in bed I photographed was my friend, Zoe Thaets,” Maher tells me. “It was right after I moved into my own apartment in NYC, which was the first place I felt free to create, scream, laugh and cry – it became my own personal world. It was one of those places where you could share all your late night secrets when you would have sleepovers.”
Images Courtesy of the Artist.
Girls in Bed is Maher’s first book. After collaborating with Friend Editions on a series of zines and an exhibition showcasing these images, the natural progression, Oliver Shaw, FE’s creative director, says, was to make the book. “It’s an extremely impressive accomplishment to photograph and include 75 people over the course of five years into one place. And to do it so well is legendary,” he says. “Morgan has the ability to show how people feel in her photos.”
Simone de Beauvoir once famously wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Yet what does it mean, to arrive at the gates of womanhood? And what feelings bubble and surface, in the time it takes to get there? On that journey, a transition takes place that involves an acknowledgement of one’s own desires – which, at the best of times, is a sticky, messy and awkward prospect. There’s a discomfort in the unknown of femininity’s awakening. And according to Maher, there is something inherently sexy about that. “There’s no such thing as having too many clothes on the ground, or eyeliner being too smudged,” she affirms. “To create girl mess, is to create something beautiful.”
Girls in Bed by Morgan Maher is published by FRIEND EDITIONS and is out now.