Facing up to the anxieties of adulthood, in pictures

Showing Face — In a new exhibition, the work of photographers David Neman, Tom Palluch and Christian Kage comes together to investigate the idea that growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

There comes a point in your life when birthdays cease to exist as exciting things, instead mutating into annual reminders of your own inescapable mortality.

As you sit there – you, an adult, yet still unable to cook every variation of egg – reading an email outlining your automatic enrolment in a company pension scheme, you realise that adulthood came for you. You are now, as they say, grown up. And it’s scary.

Showing Face, a new exhibition hosted by Berlin’s FK Kollektiv, investigates that very feeling. Bringing together the work of David Neman, Tom Palluch and Christian Kage. Curated by fellow photographer Jon Cuadros, the group show dives into the anxiety that comes with adulthood, presenting the notion that growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Adulthood will turn melancholic when all your dreams are fulfilled,” explains Palluch. “When your life is demystified to 100 per cent. Your horizon is so broaden that there is no horizon anymore. You can not find the freshness anymore. You have seen it all.”

Placing vibrant, colourful scenes alongside images in introspective monochrome, the work featured in Showing Face explores idea of loneliness, independence, ambition, prescribed masculinity and the loss of innocence.

“In the end I say modern adulthood brings the best visions of horror and the sublime until our deathbed hallucinations kick in,” Cuadros says.

“I feel inspired to commiserate in this experience with my contemporaries. Some people run bars, I have access to a gallery space. To quote a friend: hell awaits us all, so let’s have fun with it.”