Portraits From the McCarren Park Pool Locker Room

Photographer Amy Touchette, whose work has appeared on the Pin in the form of this intensely gorgeous collaboration with The World Famous *BOB* and this 2011 series of sister/not sister portraits, has a wonderful new photo collection and essay about the rule-heavy McCarren Park Pool and the locker room where she met and covertly, quickly photographed a succession of shy, brazen, awesome teenage girls. She writes about it wonderfully here, and explains why she fought to stay:

We pass by people all day long, for the most part hardly giving them a glance, and it keeps our disconnection alive. But to ignore this demographic seems especially detrimental. Caught in the middle of life’s most difficult years, teenagers are forced to react to their reality without the maturity and knowledge only years of experience can bring, and consequences abound. Especially transparent and raw, they are a portal into what it’s like to be human at its most basic level, and I really wanted to keep photographing them in this unique environment.

The portraits are gorgeous. [BagNews]