Photographer Beth Garrabrant's Book 'Things Shouldn't Be So Hard' Is a Tender Depiction of Coming of Age

Photographer Beth Garrabrant has spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to grow up in America. Most notably, she’s collaborated closely with one of the nation’s leading voices on girlhood: Taylor Swift. (She's shot the singer's album artwork since folklore.) But even before the two connected, so-called timeless representations of coming of age were omnipresent in Garrabrant’s childhood. She was raised in Lake Forest, Illinois, best known as the Chicago suburb that inspired many of John Hughes’ iconic teen films (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club), and growing up, it felt like she was in one herself.

While it came together somewhat inadvertently outside of her work with Swift, Garrabrant’s lifelong interest in youth culture, her suburban upbringing, and her focus on portraiture led her to create her own project about youth in America. Titled Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard (published by Simon & Schuster on November 12), it features photos illustrating how coming of age in America is not a monolith. Instead, it shows beauty exists in the quieter, more vulnerable moments of our shared experiences like being alone in our bedrooms; riding in the backseats of our loved ones' cars; in between classes in school hallways.

The monograph spans two decades of work. The book’s earliest entries include shots Garrabrant took of her sister and friends in the early 2000s. Years later, she set out to capture staged portraits of children and teens across the country in spaces that felt familiar: their schools, homes, part-time jobs, or places of worship. The images fit together seamlessly in what became Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard.

With her debut book on shelves now, Garrabrant shared three exclusive photos with Marie Claire——two from her time spent in South Bend, Indiana, and one from Brooklyn, New York—alongside captions about how she crafted each shot.

South Bend is very cold in the winter. The sun disappears around late October and doesn’t return until mid-April. But once the sun does come back it’s as if everyone in the midwest suddenly wakes up and goes outside. That’s what the whole Chicagoland area is like in the spring. Louie was no exception on the day we took this picture. His family was doing some spring cleaning in the backyard, negotiating over what was still used and important.

Bela and Katia are Louie’s sisters. Throughout my four years in South Bend I mostly made pictures and videos with Bela, Katia, and Louie. This picture is from my first attempt to shoot and print color film. I didn’t know how to use strobes yet, so we used the remaining daylight, turned on the bedside lamps, and I asked the girls to sit as still as they could. We were in the attic-turned-guest room and the scent of dinner was in the air. Bela was always my co-director and Katia always wanted to hold my light meter. The “clicky thing.”

This was my downstairs neighbor, Savi, in her aunt Joy’s living room. Ms. Joy owned the building, an extraordinary brownstone on Adelphi Street that had a koi pond and a greenhouse. Whenever I saw Savi, she was always off to ballet or school, buttoned up in a puffer coat and tights and holding her mom’s hand walking out the door. When she was home, she was often at Joy’s and the doors were always open for a visit. Savi was shy, but she loved to perform and would relish in showing us what she had recently perfected.