We met Daria and her friends right before the Czech parliamentary election. At a café, asking for cigarettes, they were lazily laughing their way to a photoshoot later in the day. We were bored too, with less plans than Daria and her friends and no discernible excitement for these plans, so we gave the kids some cigarettes and let them talk.
And boy, talk they did. About their plans to catch the light on the rare bit of sun in a moggy Prague, about their Halloween plans, about their parties, and their upcoming graduation.
Curiously the parliamentary election that was going to take place the week after didn’t come up. Neither did the fear in the air – the visual pollution of politics on every wall, bench, bus, and billboard seemed to elude them, as if it existed just outside their visual periphery.
Daria and her friends were excited to take pictures, to celebrate Halloween, and to smile a series of stubborn smiles intent on shutting the mundanity of history moving. No election could ruin their mood, no changing (collapsing?) of the world could muster a single moment more interesting than being a teenager, convinced every experience they have is a first in human history. After all, politics, the real world, was there before they began to understand themselves, and as their journey of self-discovery gains speed, they shut the outside out, stubbornly confident that once they’re done smiling there’ll still be a world to return to, another election to follow closely.
Vox Nauseum brings you our first photo essay: Stubborn Smiles.
