THE GIRL PROJECT - A Photographic Exploration of Adolescent Girlhood Today

NEW YORK, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Photographer Kate Engelbrecht brings the world of American teenage girls into focus with The Girl Project, a provocative series of photographs and interviews investigating the complex lives of the modern teenager.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091104/NY05294 )

The project was born of her own curiosity about American girlhood and the glamorization of female adolescence in the mass media and on television dramas such as Gossip Girl, The Hills, and NYC Prep. "I was seeing an entire generation of American girls, soon to be American women, being universally misrepresented," said Engelbrecht. Determined to understand the experience of average teenage girls and to correct public misconceptions, Engelbrecht began reaching out to girls between the ages of 13 and 18 across the United States and sending Kodak disposable cameras by mail for them to photo document their everyday lives.

The Girl Project features young women from different cross-sections of society. Some live in urban cities while others are from rural hometowns; they vary in ethnicity, race, religion and age, yet the collective pressures of modern society echo through their self-portraits. Girls responded to Engelbrecht's questionnaire with dreams of becoming artists, photojournalists, and psychologists while others hope to be lawyers, travelers, and fashion designers, but they share a desire to make a difference in the world and be influential in the lives of future generations of women.

With The Girl Project, Engelbrecht has delivered a profound commentary on the vicissitudes of growing up today -- revealing the girls' common struggles and celebrating their original triumphs while they cope with new levels of responsibility and expectations of maturity. Garnering astounding support and immediate success, Engelbrecht now receives approximately 400 camera requests each month and will continue to promote the project until 5,000 cameras are distributed. The Girl Project was exhibited at SCOPE Miami in 2008.

Kate Engelbrecht has spent the last seven years working primarily with families and children and her work has been published in PDN and Time Out New York. Outside of photography she has worked on several freelance research and writing assignments for the Oxygen Network and in her free time loves to travel, read and cook.