We have been attempting to demystify the magic of childhood since time immemorial. It has something to do with the fact that, as children, we are not as concerned with recording life as we are with living it. The urge to document comes later, when we learn of time’s snares — of the propensity to forget that which we thought we’d hold most dear. San Francisco-based photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti addresses this reality in her ongoing series The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams (spotted via Feature Shoot). As a child, she spent summers at her father’s farm outside of Buenos Aires. When she returned to that patch of countryside years later, she encountered Beli and Guile, the subjects of her series.
“Beli and Guille were always running, climbing, chasing chickens and rabbits,” Sanguinetti writes of her urge to photograph the girls. “Sometimes I’d take their picture just so they’d leave me alone and stop scaring the animals away, but mostly I would shoo them out of the frame. I was indifferent to them until the summer of 1999, when I found myself spending almost everyday with them. They were nine and ten years old then, and one day, instead of asking them to move aside, I let them stay.” Her look inside the private moments of a childhood shared and the confusing and fraught transition into adolescence reveals the magic of what we all, in growing up, left behind.
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti
Image credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti