The moment you hit your 20s, everything changes. Or at least, we assume it’s meant to. It’s a transition that has long fascinated London-based photographer Francesca Allen who, through the life of 24-year-old musician Aya Yanase (also known as Aya Gloomy), a young Japanese woman living in Tokyo, hopes to reintroduce the idea of girlhood as a perspective rather than a fixed age.
"There’s this quote that always sits with me," she tells Refinery29. "It’s about girlishness and girlhood not as an age but a state of mind. And I feel that looking for girlhood is a concept in any age of woman – someone that represents something really young when they’re not supposed to be in that stage any more in their life."
Francesca, who is 25 years old, was introduced to Aya through a friend while on a trip to Tokyo back in 2016. Despite the language barrier and not knowing each other very well, Francesca quickly felt connected to Aya and decided to return to Japan the following year to photograph the young woman who she feels "embodies what my work is about".
It only takes a quick glance at the photographs to realise that Francesca and Aya became very close. The series was shot over a month during which they did everything together – meeting mates, going to gigs, hanging out and building a friendship. Surprisingly, a big part of creating normality within such intimate photographs was not being able to rely on speaking to each other. "I think a big part of it was the language barrier," Francesca explains. "Using the camera, it becomes a tool of communication. We did understand bits and we were communicating in other ways but that was the real foundation of this."
Francesca adds: "I think there’s something about having a camera there that gives an excuse to ask things of people that you wouldn’t normally ask them. It opens up new experiences, I think. We wouldn’t have spent such a close time together if we weren’t doing the photos. The camera becomes an excuse to push boundaries to see what feels comfortable for myself and who I’m photographing."
Between shots of Aya in her cluttered apartment (which sits just below her grandmother's place), her transition from rose gold to "Troll" blue hair and a picture of her idly waiting at a bus stop, we get a sense of the frivolity associated with a girlhood that we're expected to leave behind once we reach our 20s. "I feel like when you leave your teens you’re expected to leave your teens – but no one does. Everyone at 25 is still dressing like a teenager, having the same fun, if not more fun than they were having when they were younger," Francesca says. But girlishness, as Francesca relays, is a spirit that isn't tied to age. It's a perspective that Aya embraces.
Here Francesca talks us through the thoughts and context behind a selection of the photographs – narrowed down from thousands documenting the evolution of her friendship with Aya – that made it into the final book.
Aya is available to order from Libraryman Books
This was the first day Aya and I spent together. Aya was playing a gig in Shimokitazawa so we dropped her things off at the venue and explored the area. I think we were both feeling very shy. That night I watched Aya perform at our friend Yukika’s party called Thursdays Youth Club.
Aya waiting for a bus to take us back to the city, we had spent the day taking photos in Koganei Koen. The sun had just set and the light was really soft and creamy. I didn’t think anything of this photo when I took it as it was very much a candid snapshot, but it’s one of my favourites.
Our friend Yuki helped us find a studio to take photos in. It was a huge studio big enough to photograph cars in so it was a lot of fun to be there, just us two. Aya and I ran around all day taking photos, dancing and listening to music.
Aya was living in the suburbs of Tokyo at the time, underneath her grandma’s apartment. Aya’s flat was full to the brim of everything you could imagine.
I took this photo right before I went with Aya to get her hair dyed blue. Aya's inspiration for the colour was the blue hair of her Troll necklace. Our friend Joseph spent the day with us; he speaks both Japanese and English so helped us to communicate a lot of the time.
This was the last day that Aya and I spent taking photos, we hung out again a few times after that but to eat food and say goodbye. I remember this moment very clearly because it felt very poignant for some reason. Perhaps because it was our last day, perhaps because everything seemed to click together and I felt like my project was finished, or perhaps because the light was so beautiful.
Again this was taken in the big studio. I was stood on a huge ladder looking down on Aya.
This is perhaps my favourite photo from the series, maybe even my favourite photo I’ve taken. It was shot in a traditional Japanese bath house. The murals on the walls are so beautiful and the light that came in through the windows made the whole scene look like a painting.
On our last day together I asked Aya to write some notes about our time together. In this one Aya speaks about dyeing her hair blue and how it reflected her feelings at the time.
In this note, Aya is talking about our time together in the spring, how fast it went and how we helped each other.
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