"13/20" is a personal documentary project with a view from deep inside the liminal space of puberty. Over a period of eight years, from 2003-2010, artist Cathrine Wessel photographed and videoed her nephew Mathias and his shifting group of friends through their teen-age years on an island in the Nordic Sea.

The Time of year is Summer when the youth have naturally shed the extra layers.

The presence of the physicality of skin against skin weaves through the images.

We follow their transformation from the innocent play of 13-year-olds, where bodies are intertwined and screams reveal a mixture of pain and delight, to exploratory playfights and conscious touching in the more complex social relationships of adolescence.

There is an unfiltered energy, like the wildflowers – they grow crazy wild and sting with their adolescent untamed force.

Wessel also documents this transformation from youth to adulthood in portraits where the gaze changes from the open questioning face of youth to the more private face of 20-year-olds.

The project was first shown in the exhibition "Wildflowers" at Buer Gallery (2024), which included 50 analog photographs and video, integrated with natural installations from the landscape where the photos were taken. Wessel is now in the process of further developing the project into a larger exhibition and a book.

In the series "Standing Rock," Wessel photographed the teenagers every year, at the same time and same place observing the rapid physical changes, witnessing the openness, curiosity, and trust of the group. This body of work is from a time before the self-conscious gaze of the digital age. A time when identity was not formed through performance for the lens. These adolescents mirror their selves to each other through their bodies in play and in rest. Theirs is a freedom unknown today, free from the public gaze that so often transmutes to private insecurity. Mental health youth organizations describe how young people today feel judged and criticized– that they are "fundamentally not good enough."

Our skin is our largest sensory organ and through play gives us the first safe exploration and education in our awakening to the life of the body. The natural and exuberant physical interactions "13/20" documents, disappear when relationships are formed on digital platforms.

As the philosopher David Abram wrote, “This breathing body is how we experience & inhabit the world, how we are visible & sensible to one another.” Today young people are uncertain how physically close they can stand next to each other, driven by the uncertainty and awkwardness of adolescence, exacerbated by Covid and the isolation of the screen.

This body of work therefore becomes a time capsule offering a lens on the changes that have occurred. It stands in stark contrast to what the youth of today have lost– their sense of trust,

exploration of human touch and their own identity. Masterfully, Wessel has managed to capture these moments, which are both entirely personal and simultaneously universally recognizable.

Wessel states, “I deliberately choose which cameras depending on what voice and qualities I want the image to have, using a 4x5 Large Format, Pentax 6x7 or Leica for 35mm.

The tactile and sensory aspects of analog photography are so important in this project. It reflects the touch of the skin in the grain structures, the light, and the chemical reactions that occur during development. There is something artisanal and tactile about working analog. Here I know myself best. This is where my early teachings lay, I work intuitively, and I feel it in my heart when the best image is captured.”