STEPHEN FRAILEY:  A notable characteristic of your work is to explore broad and difficult cultural issues through the framework of adolescence, lending the work an originality and, I think, a sense of catharsis.  Would you share some thoughts about your decision to engage this age group as narrator?

SARAH BLESENER:  I'm interested in themes of adolescent identity, statehood and how ideologies are formed at a young age. Hell, I remember that sense of wanting to belong more than anything when I was a teenager. I remember how easy it was to believe in something, as long as that feeling of immediate purpose came along with it. And those are the underlying feelings I want to intertwine these larger political frames with. Engaging this age group as a narrator requires a lot of room for nuance and contradiction. There are no simple answers, nor should there be. Many of the issues that my work deals with are caught up, in a larger framework, in a classic binary of "left vs. right" in the United States. However, when we begin to confront these same difficult cultural and political issues through the lens of adolescence, there is this particular tension that arises. Adolescence has a way of disrupting narratives and muddying classical binaries. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the individuals seen in the photographs are not who they will be in a few short years from now. Their sense of self, the world around them, and their ideologies are in a state of flux. 

For myself, viewing these issues through the lens of adolescence evokes simultaneous feelings of frustration and empathy. And I think that is a very special place to be in. It allows me to pause and struggle with the images, and it allows me the space to attempt to decipher some of the underlying structural causes for these issues beyond the narrative delivered in mainstream dialogues. Beyond the headlines, what are we seeing? What economic structures are in place that are necessary for these cultural conditions? What institutions profit from them? What motivations play out behind the scenes?

I'm also interested in the way that teenagers complicate beliefs that we, collectively, accept without often questioning. What is the difference between education and indoctrination? What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism, and what does patriotism even mean? Whose version is being taught? Why is patriotism something to be praised when practiced in one's own country, but something looked on as suspicious when practiced by another? 

Most importantly, the questions I am trying to confront when addressing these issues have to do with the intersection of adolescent identity itself and statehood. How are young people responding to our current society, with all of its changes in belief systems? Where are we at in terms of empathy? 

SF:  I admire what you are saying: the adolescent narrator provides complication, nuance and contradiction, as opposed to formula.  Do you think this is a departure from documentary history? And do the young people, in their vulnerabilities——their emotions closer to the surface, say——provide clearer access to they way something feels?

SB:  I do think that they provide that feeling, that tension. But even more so, I think they require us to stop and look at things from a different angle. I think if I had done these projects with adults, the response would have been completely different. Young people require us to hold back our judgments, to realize the vast potential of paths they could take, for better or worse. Stories about adolescents must close with an open ending - there are no black and white certainties about what will happen. And I think this is not how stories are generally delivered these days. In general, people want solid conclusions and obvious takeaways rather than having to wrestle with these ideologies themselves. And this leads me back to your first question: I do think long-form documentary work is inherently opposed to formula. I'm not sure it is a departure from the documentary history itself, but I most definitely think it is a departure from how visual stories are currently created in the media. We have become so accustomed to this idea of having to sell digestible, easy narratives. In fact, it's all quite reactive to situations rather than attempting to diagnose what is happening beneath the surface. I understand the utility of fast news, but I'm much more drawn to the process of long-form projects. It offers this dialectic where the viewer is taken through a process and left to deal with conflicting feelings. The aim is, I think, to ask challenging questions rather than deliver neatly wrapped answers. 

SF: Perhaps it is a generational shift that the scaffolding of photographic narrative has transformed from an obvious literal structure to include that which seems ephemeral, parenthetical, accumulating information along the way—the ’subject’ being centrifugal.   I think photographic narrative has been sluggish, lagging behind literature and cinema and even television in its experimentation, and that the phenomenon of photographer's editing and publishing their own books has contributed to this liberation of storytelling.

SB: Yes, I think that's exactly right. This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. Literature has been my primary source of inspiration, far more than photography. It's also what I tell students, whenever I have the chance to teach about long-form projects and storytelling - diversify where you find your inspiration. Read poetry, plays, literature, philosophy, watch films. Of course there is much inspiration to be found from other photographers, but we run the risk of simply emulating instead of discovering our own process and freedom from formula. For myself, I find that from literature more than anything else. It is a realm of experimentation and complexity that most often surpasses photography. When you pick up a novel by Dostoevsky, you enter into an agreement knowing that the process will not be easy, and you commit to that process. There is this trust and confrontation in the relationship between author and reader - the reader being able to draw conclusions, generate new ideas, or perhaps head a completely different direction than intended. 

I do think photography has, for a long time, been stuck in a familiar pattern and formula that is repeated again and again. I think it has a lot to do with the role of art and mass culture under late capitalism. Maybe there is truth in what you are saying, that editing and publishing one's own books as an artist can contribute to liberation of storytelling. Interesting that, in your experience, this liberated form of visual storytelling circles back to the structure of the printed novel. I wonder how this liberation translates in other mediums. That's been the most challenging aspect of all of this for me - trying to find ways to deliver work to the public without reducing it to another formula or simplifying the entire process to something, once again, black and white and digestible. I guess what I'm trying to get at, is that liberating our ways and ideas of distribution is just as important as liberating storytelling. And when looking back at how this formula in photography is repeated over and over again, I wonder if it is truly the photographer/photography itself, or simply the ways in which it is pushed and produced into the same old editorialized, clean boxes. 

SF: Let’s return to some of the larger themes of your work.  You have used the term ‘statehood’ several times, and aluded to how economic structures affect ideological commitments.  Is manipulation an arching concern?  And what about this exact moment in our cultural and political life?

SB: Fear and hate are not endemic, but are mobilized in certain periods for political purposes. It's oftentimes easier to focus on ideology or beliefs rather than trying to understand what material conditions are necessary for these beliefs to even be possible in the first place. New forms of power struggle may take the guise of traditional nationalism, but what we are facing is a contemporary phenomena arising from contemporary causes and displaying new characteristics. And it's worthy to be analyzed as such. 

This is something that is academically easier to talk about than to photograph. In my own experience, I photographed a project in Russia with hopes that it would spur these kinds of conversations. To quickly summarize, I documented various patriotic and military camps for youth across various regions in Russia. I wanted people in the States to confront their own belief systems, the xenophobia in the latest elections, etc. However, the opposite happened. People either condemned Russians for having a "Putin army" and being nationalistic, or they praised Russia for having these programs in place, and reminisced about the glory days when America was more patriotic. 

That is always a risk when putting work out in the world (the many routes interpretation can take). But, personally I have never in my life felt more like I had failed. If our photographs and stories only propagate fear and feed misunderstanding, what are we doing? This led me to photograph the second chapter here in the States - with the idea of showing the same exact programs here, and shifting the conversation towards the ideologies that exist here in one's own backyard. It's always a struggle though, trying to maintain and protect the innocence and vulnerability of this age group, while at the same time opening stories up to large frameworks and discussions. That tension is one I often go back and forth from, and have a hard time achieving the right balance. 

Statehood is a question that fascinates me because the question of "who is in or out" becomes more important. The nation-state is a relatively new concept - how are outsiders defined? How does the nation-state function now in a world of globalism? In a "melting pot" such as the states? There is an inherent tension in ideas of classical liberalism and the notion of difference. And it is this tension that I am drawn to - individual identity vs societal belonging, the nation state itself vs globalism, etc. And, with my own work and interests, this all seems to collide in the world of adolescents, where identity and belonging are such emotional driving factors of decision making. Rather than focusing just on this need to belong / coming of age, I find it really compelling to mix these worlds and to look at coming of age within this idea of statehood. That is why I have focused so many of these stories around youth and their relationship to statehood, and what that looks like.