All Photos © Melissa Ann Pinney.

For nearly thirty years,  Melissa Ann Pinney has been photographing girls and women from infancy to old age to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. Pinney’s work depicts not only the rites of American womanhood, but also the informal passages of girlhood and adolescence. With each view the audience gains a richer understanding of the connections between a daughter and her parents, grandparents, and the larger world of friends and society. The pictures also reflect the ways in which a girl’s world in 2010 differs from the world Pinney knew growing up in the 1960s, and the ways in which the making of a person can transcend time and place. Girl Ascending, published by the Center for American Places, is a sequel to Pinney’s first book, Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women and Girl.

-courtesy University of Chicago Press.