'To Be Thirteen' spotlights Post-Millennial generation at Phoenix Art Museum

Move over, Millennials. Generation Z is making its debut.

They are so new to the national stage that conventional wisdom has not yet settled on a name — iGen and Post-Millennial are also being bandied about — nor, as will no doubt prove inevitable, a reductionist set of stereotypes. (Fire up the headline generator: “How iGen is killing [insert dubious capitalist icon here].”)

But whatever you call them, they are announcing their presence on the streets (led by the activists of Parkland, Florida's Stoneman Douglas) and in popular culture, from the sex-positive teenage feminists in “Blockers” to the gender-non-comforming grandchild on the controversial “Roseanne” reboot.

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So, who are these kids? A few tentative answers may be gleaned at a new exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum, “To Be Thirteen,” which offers photo and video portraits drawn from 250 interviews across the country.

Photographer Betsy Schneider explains that the project was inspired by her experiences reconnecting with childhood friends on Facebook.

“We started telling stories from when we were 11 and 12 and 13, and I started to think about the richness of that age and the indelibility of it,” she says. “People exchanged stories that even in their mid-40s were still kind of affecting how they went through the world. ...

“On one hand, I was intellectually interested in the idea of middle school and early adolescence, and then as a parent I was also kind of afraid of it.”

Inspired by one of her photography mentors, Sally Mann, Schneider makes art about her own children, so among the first “guinea pigs” for her project were her daughter and family friend Adele Etheridge Woodson, who’s now a music student at Arizona State University.

At 20, she is somewhere near the cusp between Generations Y and Z, depending on who’s counting.

“I appreciated how she talked to us as if we were old enough to have agency and understand our identity, which most people don’t, which is surprising,” Woodson says.

“I think the thing that defines our generation the most was we were born in the age of technology. None of us remember a time when there wasn’t the Internet and smartphones. So from a very early age, we had all this information at our fingertips, which I think is a privilege and is part of the reason we have so much activism. We are very vocal.

“Being a citizen of the world is very important, and we have been citizens of the world since we were born, because we had the Internet.”

About half of the featured kids are from the Phoenix area, where Schneider lived for 12 years before a recent move to Boston. Others were recruited in Portland, Oregon, and in Denver, where the age of 13 held a special meaning for members of a Jewish community group.

Because it was built on personal connections, it is not a random cross-section of the U.S. population, but Schneider hopes that the 250 subjects are diverse enough to create a “critical mass” of 13-year-old-ness to make a deep impression.

Perhaps like all young people, the teens Schneider interviewed displayed both optimism at life’s possibilities and fear about the future. Dystopian novels such as “The Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” trilogy were common touchstones.

“I learned something from the boys,” Schneider says. “For me, that was the most revealing, just what the pressures are on boys at that age. We talk about girls being sexualized and a lot of things that are hard for them, but ... the boys in particular seemed to be aware that they were about to be expected to be something that a lot of them seemed to be afraid of. Certainly, the ones who were more mainstream. It’s funny, the boys who seemed a little different seemed like they were figuring out a different strategy.”

So, to repeat the question, who are these kids?

“I’ve thought a lot more about that since I’ve done the project as I’ve been watching these kids — several of them I know really well — just start to enter adulthood,” Schneider says. “I think the Never Again movement is connected to the energy in that generation. But I feel like I don’t know yet.”

Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater and twitter.com/KerryLengel.

‘To Be Thirteen’

When: May 4-Oct. 14.

Where: Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 N. Central Ave.

Admission: $18 (discounts for seniors, students and children).

Details: 602-257-1222, phxart.org.

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