Female adolescence seems to remain a particular kind of enigma to the world; how to portray it, even more so. In classical literature it barely exists, as if we are children, girlish and naïve, until one day we become women, with no in-between. In film, it’s often portrayed as feverish or horror-filled in nightmarish coming-of-age narratives that play on the tumultuous nature of that time (think The Virgin Suicides). But there’s a tenderness, an awkward beauty and a quiet anxiousness at the heart of it too, which often goes unnoticed in favour of more dramatic depictions. There’s a slow unfurling of unease in that period between girlhood and womanhood, and it’s this that Isabel Magowan distils so well in her photographs.