Photographs That Know Where You’ve Been

The photos I keep coming back to look like they’ve been left out in the rain. Nothing glamorous, nothing cosmetic, no one posing with the exact blank expression that’s supposed to mean they’re interesting. These are pictures that smell like dirt, that taste like something real, and that have been beaten sideways by every feeling there is. They have a way of making you believe, after long enough staring, that you were actually there in the room—even if your most ambitious move in the past three weeks was shuffling back to the refrigerator, only to crawl back hungrier than before.

Andrea, a natural redhead from San Francisco who goes by Ladyfreak online, makes exactly those photos. Her blog Teenage Witchery and her Flickr stream run one magical image after the next: wrecked apartments, friends vomiting at house parties, a hot soul striptease in the bathtub. Making out in the pool. Girls kissing. Bands destroying every last thing in reach. Every frame has a chaotic aliveness that most photography is too careful to admit.

I’d love nothing more than to hover shyly at the edge of that world and pretend I belong to this unhinged crew. Even a little.