DUIJVEKAM, Willeke - Mandy and Eva

Background information

"The everyday lives of two gender dysphoric teenagers, pictured by the documentary photographer Willeke DUIJVEKAM. - Mandy and Eva are girls, even though they were born as boys.

Willeke DUIJVEKAM followed their lives for six years, through the whole of their adolescence. She was guided by her fascination with the perplexing split between body and mind,
and her growing admiration for the courage of these teenagers who refused to allow society's expectations to dictate their lives. Two girls, two stories, with perhaps more differences than similarities.
By having followed the two girls for so long, Willeke DUIJVEKAM's eye sees far beneath the surface. The photo series reveals how for Mandy and Eva the transformation into self-assured
young women was chiefly an inner process. Her quiet photos show the girls going about their daily lives, or lost in their own thoughts. The struggle to outwardly become the girls that they already were inwardly must be read in the details.
The book 'Mandy and Eva' is designed as two books in one cover, one spine left and one right. The pages are folded alternately and so overlapping each other, first revealing a picture of Mandy,
than a picture of Eva and so on, emphasizing not so much similarities between the two girls but even more so their differences. The photo’s are edited back in time, starting now and ending six years ago." (© Willeke DUIJVEKAM)