Fumi Nagasaka | Teenage Riot

Fumi Nagasaka

Teenage Riot

Port Colborne, Canada: Bywater Bros. Editions, 2018

80 pp., 22.7 x 16.7 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Taking it's title from a 1988 Sonic Youth song, Teenage Riot is Japanese photographer Fumi Nagasaka's second book, after the 2016 Kohl Editions title Untitled Youth. 

The book presents a series of portraits taken over the course of several years, of four teenage girls from varying backgrounds: Maxine from the small Ontario town of Port Colborne; sisters Isabella and Alana from Brooklyn; and Fubuki, a young student from Tokyo. 

Nagasaka was specifically interested in how their different upbringings were reflected in each girl’s personality and interests.

"The place they grew up in really affects who they become," she told Paige Silveria at Office Magazine. "For the girl in Canada, she’s my book publisher’s daughter. I met her at the New York book fair three years or so ago. I was surprised how different she was from her parents, who are very cultural. She really likes Kim Kardashian and had really crazy eyelashes. I thought it was so interesting that she grew up in an art environment and had such dissimilar interests from her parents. That made me want to photograph her. So, I spent some time up with them at their home in Canada. Because the town is very small, all of the information she gets is from social media and the internet. She would wear Juicy Couture pink velour tracksuits and was really into Victoria’s Secret. Every year I went back and she would change her style—it was always very different from the year before. And when she turned 16, she got her driver’s license. So I would drive around with her in the white BMW her parents gave her."

Collaborating with a subject over many years helped Nagasaka create intimate and candid images of the young women that wouldn't be possible with single-sitting portraiture. 

"Photographing youth is very exciting for me as it underlines that youth is something fleeting and that we can’t keep forever. Listening to their dreams, looking at their pure expressions motivates me to capture and record moments in their lives. Youth in fact, has been the singular focus of my published works," she told NPR in 2021. 

Teenage Riot is available from the publisher, for $25 CDN, here.