Growing pains Growing pains

Shirt: Martine Rose, Shorts: Models own, Shoes: Adidas.

Balancing on the cusp of adolescence, pre-teens are awkward; their clothes don’t quite fit, their faces are stuck in childhood as their limbs extend into adulthood. It was this uncomfortable in-betweeness that LA-based photographer Noua Unu set out to capture in this exclusive fashion story for SLEEK. Photographing the 11-year-old boy Tiger, Noua Unu sought to evoke “feeling big and small at the same time,” they tell SLEEK. “[Tiger] is not a model but he’s really into dressing up and wearing different outfits. He’s at a really interesting part of life where he can openly explore his identity and feels very liberated to be different.”

“We shot in Los Angeles—both mine and Tiger’s and home town,” explains Unu. “It felt industrial and suburban at the same time and that in-between space is also felt as an 11-year-old, not a kid but not a teenager either.” The images, in which Tiger playfully poses around LA, are a peculiar mixture of self-assured and self-effacing. As Tiger stands, legs apart, wearing wide leg jeans and oversized sunglasses he exudes a cockiness, which is quickly underscored by his childishness. The result is as Unu desired: an encapsulation of the strangely ephemeral nature of pre-teens, or the photographer says—describing the editorial in three words—as “boyish, eternal, dreamer.”