@photovogue PhotoVogue Festival 2022 is coming! At BASE Milano from November 17 to 20. “The Next Great Fashion Image Makers”: today we introduce @filmmarkle (USA). #AshleyMarkle is one of the 40 artists selected for this exhibition through our first Global Open Call by an international jury among more than 30,000 images and 3.000 artists from 121 different countries! The open call is endorsed by all the editions of Vogue globally. #AshleyMarkle’s project that will be exhibited is titled “Lonely Girl”. Ashley: “growing up as a girl is full of contradictions. Womanhood is presented as an alluring end goal full of love and beauty. Young girls fall for the trap and try to rip themselves away from childhood quicker. In reality, womanhood teaches us that we are not the main character of our story. We must strive for perfection and beauty so that we may catch a man to ultimately serve him and his needs. We are taught not to be too loud, too boyish, too assertive, as this is not appealing. All of life is a competition and we are pitted against our fellow girls. This story shows the moment in between childhood and womanhood. These two girls exist in the in-between of living as the most uninhibited version of themselves while being drawn to the trap of womanhood. Young girls will feel the urge to play roughhouse and scrape their knees while adults slip ruffled tank tops over their still unformed nipples; a sexualized eye scans their bodies. Signaling the future paradox of dressing pretty but not too slutty. Everything taught to our daughters leaves them feeling empty. Searching for happiness in a life destined only for people-pleasing, never to fulfill even that expectation. We teach them: “stick up for yourself but don’t sound bitchy, be nice but not too nice, dress feminine and show skin but not too much, be smart but not smarter than the boys. My goal with this story is to show the unfair paradox it means to grow from child to woman”. More about the upcoming #PhotoVogueFestival2022 via link in bio.