When I first came across Anna Grzelewska's project about her daughter Julia Wannabe growing up, he made a huge impression on me. Just like the photos of the famous Sally Mann, who from the 1980s photographed her children: Jessie, Emmett and Virginia. At that time, Mann's photos were severely criticized - as too promiscuous, disturbingly erotic, inappropriate, too bold. In prudish America, they disturbed the image of pastoral childhood, bringing anxiety to it.
Pictures of Anna Grzelewska in the post-consumer era may no longer shock, but their impact on the viewer is equally strong. This sincere, dull visual Bildungsroman immediately evoked in me the memories of those years when emotions prevailed over reason and life seemed to be an incomprehensible plot of adults. Here's how the artist describes her project:
The Julia wannabe project is about the growing up of my daughter Julia. I'm interested in the moment when a girl becomes a woman. There is something disturbing, ambiguous at this border point. Childhood is perceived in our culture as a land of happiness, innocence and sweetness. Our memory tends to erase any flaws in this image. Photographing Julia, I wanted to look at the process of growing up in a more complex way. Therefore, this is not a reportage record of events from Julia's life, a diary or family album, but an attempt to capture the universal character of that time. It is also a photographic reinterpretation of the psychological process of transference - the photographic image is the result of Julia's experience and my memory. By adopting this perspective, it turns out that the border between adulthood and childhood is fluid, that their images intertwine.
The title of the project "Julia wannabe" is a reference to the phenomenon of "Madonna wanna be". That's the name of girls who dress up as Madonna. Not only do they wear the same clothes, do similarly, listen to her music but through these external attributes try to reach the essence of "being Madonna", the essence of this type of femininity. Paradoxically, this liking allows them to express themselves. The cycle has been created since 2006.