JOJO

The first time I photographed her, I knew nothing of her. She was sitting on the stairs of Union Square with a vague stare as her friends buzzed around. Her posture, indecipherable age, and idiosyncratic mannerisms mixed with streetlight vapors and the hue of the Indian summer night sky created a mystique. At a glance, I was intrigued. I concocted a story in my mind about where she lived, her relationship with her parents, and her daily routine.

Her name is JoJo, and she was fourteen when I met her in September of 2008.

Although underlying elements of JoJo’s life surface in some of the first images I captured, I would have never imagined a life with such mad colors and theatrical volatility. The flamboyant, painted poem by René Ricard dominates the wall of her living room and hints at the gap between traditional mores and JoJo’s norm. Moments where the aligned elements in the photographs seem incongruous illustrate the contradictions of her life: differentiation versus emulation, suffocation versus independence, naïveté versus sophistication, and the quotidian versus the exotic.

Her biography is compelling, but what interests me is her relationship to her unique environment and the people who occupy it. JoJo floats, gazes, and seemingly inattentively navigates her world.