Sandra Mehl: Ilona and Maddelena

Photographer's Profile:
Sandra is a documentary photographer, based in Montpellier, in the south of France. With a background in sociology, her long-term projects focus on family and teenage-hood, in national and international contexts. She collaborates with newspapers and magazines, NGOs, and exhibits her personal work in museums and festivals.

Project Description:
This series focuses on two sisters, Ilona and Maddelena. Aged 12 and 11, they are from Cité Gély in Montpellier, a working-class neighbourhood in southern France where they have always lived with their parents. This long-term portrait project illustrates adolescence in disadvantaged social backgrounds, highlighting the fragility and resistance of that age, and making references to my own childhood.