REVISITING GIRLHOOD
London, October 2025
Capturing the spirit of teenage girlhood, Irish photographer EIMEAR LYNCH’s debut photobook, ‘Girls Night’, nostalgically immerses us in the adolescent rituals of getting ready for a night out with your friends. Drawing on Lynch’s own memories of her formative years where 10 girls squeezed into a room doing self-tan, the image-maker travelled around Ireland to photograph a new generation of girls sharing clothes, hair straighteners and crowded around a mirror perfecting their make-up together. Shot in bedrooms and venues across the country, the pages of the book unfold shared moments of coming of age and identity with a universal familiarity, celebrating the excitement and anticipation of heading out to discos, lensed in Lynch’s signature unfiltered gaze and colourful aesthetic, which emotively resonates with authenticity.
Having worked with Simona Rocha, Miu Miu and Tim Walker among others, Lynch’s work is currently appearing in the ‘GIRLS. On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between’ exhibition at the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp. We caught up with her to talk about the show, the book and how she got into reportage photography.
Had you always been fascinated in documenting this stage of girlhood?
Not always no, but the older I got, the more I was thinking about my teenage years. I found myself thinking a lot about my own transition from childhood to becoming a teenager and how dubious that time was. Turning 30 this year made me more reflective about transitions and the way we move through different stages of life. Revisiting girlhood became a way to process my own past, but also to explore those universal, often complicated experiences of growing up.
How did that interest lead you to create Girls’ Night, and when did you start the project?
I had never made work in Ireland and had always wanted to but didn’t know what the project would be yet. Just before I started Girls’ Night I moved to Paris. I love Paris but I wasn’t creatively inspired there at all. It’s too perfect as a place, everyone is too good looking, and the city is too beautiful. It made me miss the honesty and rawness of Ireland. So, I decided to finally go back after leaving Ireland 5 years prior. The project began very slowly. I hadn’t done much work before, so it was difficult at first to get people to trust my vision.
Speaking of trust, how was it scouting and casting the girls who feature in the book too, in terms of approaching them – was it quite daunting as teen girls can be shy? How did they feel about being photographed?
I scoured TikTok, Instagram, and shopping centres to find girls to photograph. I also had help from NotAnother Intl., a casting and modelling agency in Dublin. They did call outs on their Instagram which was a massive help. Getting the first couple of groups was hard as they didn’t fully understand my work or the photos I was trying to capture. But after a couple of groups, it became a lot easier to gain their trust. The girls were shy at the beginning but after spending a little bit of time with them, they loosened up and became more comfortable with me.
Did you spend days with them in their homes, and watch their rituals in getting ready and listen to their stories before photographing them, to capture the authenticity of their lives and individual stories? Did you learn anything that surprised you?
I had only met the girls for the first time when I was in their bedrooms with my camera. I would chat to them a bit before to explain my project and get to know them and then begin photographing. What really helped was photographing friends together, there’s such a natural comfort and energy between them that made the atmosphere feel authentic. I also purposefully would come with a very simple set-up, just me, a camera, and a handheld flash. The girls would usually be quite shy at the beginning but after a while they would almost forget I was there and let me snap away as they were getting ready. I think the most surprising thing that I found is how much knowledge girls these days have of makeup and skincare, compared to when I was a teenager and only wore layers of the wrong shade of foundation and thick black eye liner only!
What about fashion and identity, as there’s a uniform style in the pictures, like the rite of passage bodycon dresses and wobbly stilettos! It’s often the first-time girls can pretend at being women, and it’s not just for the male gaze, it’s for them to look at each other and learn and feel confident in these first signs of womanhood. Did that come across when shooting?
Yes, that’s what I realised when photographing the girls. They rarely spoke about boys or wondered whether the boys would notice the effort they were putting in. It seemed like they didn’t care. It felt much more about each other, about sharing that ritual together rather than trying to appeal to the male gaze.
Do you have any favourite images from the book, and will you perhaps make a follow-up?
I like the images of the girls dancing in the discos. I think a lot of people think young people don’t have fun anymore because they only care about their phones, so I really liked watching girls letting loose. I also like the quiet awkward moments that I tried to capture. Those moments feel most representative of my feelings at that age.
I have started working on my next book which will be kind of a continuation of Girls’ Night but will document girls from age 8 at the First Holy Communion to age 18 at the Debs, and everything in between. This project will be based in Ireland again, and after that one I’d love to explore girlhood in other countries and cultures.
How was it reliving your own memories of getting ready for nights out? What were your own rituals?
I really loved reliving those memories. I think age 13/14 years old for me was quite a nice, sweet spot, before things got a bit more complicated at 15/16. I had a great group of girlfriends, and we were discovering the transition into womanhood together. We would whisper in class planning our outfits weeks in advance. We would all go to one of the girls’ houses hours before the disco and do our tan, makeup, and hair together. There would be about 10 of us, squeezed into a bedroom, makeup bags opened and spilled over the bed.
Back then of course, and in my time too, we weren’t having to navigate this very uncertain and shifting world – particularly with the demands of social media and heavily sexualised digital identities that girls create and recreate constantly. Did you see or feel any of that pressure when you were shooting the girls, being consumed by their appearance?
Yes definitely. It’s normal to compare yourself to others, but when I was a teenager, I could only compare myself to my friends or the people I saw at the discos. Whereas now, a 13-year-old girl from a small town in Ireland is comparing herself to a teenager who grew up in LA with famous parents. Social media has really amplified that pressure. Trends move so quickly and there’s a constant push towards consumerism, new products, new aesthetics, new ways of presenting yourself. At the same time, the influencer lifestyle looks accessible and appealing, which makes the pressure to turn identity into something consumable feel even stronger.
Those trends are being explored in the new GIRLS exhibition at the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp, which includes some of your own images. How do you think they fit into this idea of the show dismantling stereotypes and portraying teenage girls in a different way, as the media is so comfortable commodifying them?
I think the exhibition does an important job of showing girlhood in all its forms. I think the images from my book, Girls’ Night, fit into that by capturing the everyday realities, friendships, and rituals of teenage girls.
It’s great (and so important in this cultural shift), that an exhibition like this is celebrating girlhood. But why do you think teenagers resonate so widely as a photographic subject – fashion, music and film are all collectively obsessed with adolescence?
Your feelings as a teenager are so intense, you’re constantly questioning everything and trying to figure out yourself and the world around you. It’s a time of transition, of firsts, of uncertainty, and that energy is incredibly magnetic. Fashion, music, and film are all drawn to that rawness and volatility. Teenagers are at once experimenting with identity and reflecting the culture back in real time, which makes them endlessly fascinating as a subject.
So, how did you get into reportage photography… you capture atmosphere very well?
I was always inspired by documentary photographers like Lauren Greenfield, Susan Meiselas, Diane Arbus, and loved the idea of being able to go out alone with a camera and not have to arrange a team and sets etc. like you do with fashion photography. I really love working by myself and find it quite peaceful being an observer in a busy scenario.
Interview by Kate Lawson
All pictures by Eimear Lynch from the book Girls Night