1 Image from 200 Troubled Teenagers exhibit
and Patrick O'Dell, Angela Boatwright
Angela Boatwright & Patrick O’Dell
Issue #29
The photography team shines light on the next rebel generation of young metal heads and kick-push skaters with 200 Trouble Teenagers exhibit
By Melissa Silvestri
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
Angela Boatwright shows me her photograph of a shy but beautiful teenage boy, his long, matted hair and petulant lips reminiscent of an early ’90s Anthony Kiedis. She beams at her discovery of this artistic and shy boy. “He was so sweet and so cute, like, ‘I can’t believe you want to take my picture. I didn’t think anyone would like the way I looked.’”
The New York photographer has combined her heavy-metal roots with her photography career (her résumé includes shoots for Revolver, Jane, and Urban Outfitters) and has collected an array of images of young kids turned on by the heavy-metal world. Together with her collaborator, Patrick O’Dell — who works as Vice magazine’s photo editor and shoots for Thrasher — they put together a collection called 200 Troubled Teenagers that showed at NYC’s Max Fish from mid-June to July. The portraits spotlighted the skate and heavy-metal youths who live on the outskirts of society and find solace and community in their respective environments.
The project was created when Boatwright realized that she and O’Dell shared a lot of the same sympathies toward youths in their respective subcultures, and that they could do a show together separate from their commercial work. Over the past few years, Boatwright and O'Dell have photographed kids at skateboarding events and concerts, capturing their energy and wildness as a portfolio of their side interests. Photographing the kids, for the duo, is more hobby than work. Boatwright saw her hobby as a great opportunity to separate the work that pays the bills from her personal creative work.
Boatwright, 31, has been working as a photographer since 1993, when she moved to New York from Ohio. She says her personal experience with heavy metal started at an early age. “When I was 13, me and my best friend would leave town and follow metal bands around. I played guitar, and we’d go around and follow these older men around. In the ’80s, it wasn’t such a big deal. People didn’t look at you weird if you were walking around with a couple of 13-year-old girls. It’s really different now. But I think that’s why I’m attracted to shooting this kind of stuff. That’s what I did in the ’80s.”
Boatwright’s photos have an innocent and delicate quality to them, capturing the tumultuous teenage years as only one with a sympathetic ear can. “Some of these kids are 12 years old, and they’re always out there. They’re into skateboarding and music — they’re really passionate about it — this is something that’s really important to them,” Boatwright says. “They’re not paying rent, they don’t have a job, their family situation bums them out. So if someone wants to photograph them in their heavy-metal shirt with their long hair down at the show, they’re psyched. That’s what they want to be.”
A self-aware and worldly dreamer, Boatwright says her photography is influenced by religion, philosophy, and “long, long conversations.” Instead of thinking too hard about what images she wants to create, she lets the work speak for itself. She lets the subjects of her portraits act naturally or helps to bring out their tenacious personalities, which was the case for a pair of Cuban teenage girls standing defiantly against a blue wall, their arms crossed and eyes fixed by wariness.
Boatwright, in addition to her main assignments, also started Killer of Giants, a company which outsources creative talent, produces local art shows, and where Boatwright shows her non-freelance photography. She is the current Special Projects Editor for Mass Appeal, a Brooklyn-based skateboarding magazine, where she envisions shoots and hires talent for the features.
When asked if she saw her initial interest in photography being a grudging work, she strongly disagreed. "If you had asked me that five years ago, I would've have said, "Oh yeah, totally." But now, at 31, I'm at a place where I really love what I do, and I really enjoy expressing myself through my work, both the creative and the commercial."
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