PHOTO ALBUM
Celebrating the Idle Kid
The subject of choice for photojournalist Cassandra Giraldo is a reason for most people to change train cars: teenagers. For the past five years, in downtime between assignments for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Giraldo has photographed young people in New York City as they hang out, flirt, and get loud in the few hours of freedom after school.
What struck Giraldo, beyond the nice afternoon light that emerges when kids get out of school and fades by the time they need to go home to dinner, was the way teenagers managed to reclaim parts of the cityscape. A sidewalk or a bollard became a gathering place akin to the suburban mall.
“Growing up in Los Angeles, I was a different kind of urban kid. The idle time after school usually meant driving around with friends, in our little bubble,” explains Giraldo. “For New York City kids, there’s a really striking independence in public spaces. The public spaces are all they have, and a park, or the sidewalk, or a tree, or a fence, or a parked car becomes the furniture where these kids play out their youth.”
It was the cacophony that rose in after-school hours that first drew Giraldo to launch The After School Project on Instagram, but what kept her coming back was the way a group of loitering teenagers could transform urban space.
“There is this assumption that in big cities like New York the idle kid must be up to something nefarious. I wanted to celebrate that time. These are just kids, and loitering in front of a bodega is both a mundane and important part of being a kid in New York,” says Giraldo. “This space is where they are able to exercise being adults, to play out what it is like to be grown-up. For New York City kids, the streets are their stage.”
Find The After School Project on Instagram @afterschoolproject
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