Amy Touchette
Feb. 22 - March 16, 2018
Opening Talk
4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22
Dexter Rm.149 with reception to follow
A solo exhibition of Amy Touchette’s three bodies of work focusing on teens, entitled The Young Series, will be on view at the University Art Gallery.
“Teenagers are raw adults; they are exposed to adult situations, but lack the experience and wisdom that maturity brings, and adult consequences abound. I was transfixed by the extremity of their hybrid nature, but I also simply wanted to
capture what is such a distinct and fleeting time in life—the teen years—regardless of where one lives. —Amy Touchette
Throughout her career, photographic artist Amy Touchette has explored connections between humanity, making photographs of people within their social groups and communities. A documentarian and a street photographer, Touchette
has utilized the power of photography to create authentic portraits of those who interest her. In 2012, The New York Times published images from New York Young, Touchette’s street portrait series of teenagers in New York City. The
newspaper described the work as “a potent mix of street savvy and aching vulnerability …”
New York Young inspired Touchette to make the same style of portraits of teenagers in O’ahu, Hawaii and Tokyo, Japan to discover what teen culture looks like in three disparate island nations. She writes: “Before travel became so ubiquitous,
island populations were more sequestered … their culture would reflect that isolation in that it felt more unified and unique than landlocked settings. Although the world is globalized now, significant remnants of each island culture still exist. I thought that because these three locations had strong and distinct personalities, it would create a more heightened and interesting visual experience.”
A solo exhibition of Touchette’s three bodies of work focusing on teens, entitled The Young Series, will be on view at the California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo Gallery from February 22 to March 16, 2018. The work will be displayed in different groupings to invite viewers to actively engage with the photographs, discovering differences and similarities in the postures, fashion, relationships, behaviors, and attitudes of young people from different cultures,
ethnicities, and geographic parts of the world.