20-something-year-olds get brutally honest

Graduating just three weeks ago from the Manchester School of Art, photographer Hannah Jones is on that knife edge that separates freedom and the fear of taking ‘the next step’. “I've really got no idea what’s next. I don't know what's going to happen next week!” she says. “That's the silver lining of leaving the stability of education after the best part of a lifetime. You have to fend for yourself, but you have the freedom to do exactly what you want.”

Her final year project “20 Somethings” began after Jones began to challenge the way she had been working throughout her degree. “During university I was making work that I liked, and sometimes didn't like, that didn't really go anywhere. I didn't know what the point was in forcing myself to find deep hidden meanings within the pictures I made,” she explains. Turning the lens on her contemporaries, Jones hit a stride, she says, “I realised that I wanted to do something that's socially relevant, but also something that I can relate to – so I started finding people and asking friends who are in their twenties if I could photograph them.”

From shooting portraits her work turned into a documentation of those around her and she drilled deeper. “I wanted to make it more personal, which led to me turning – what was initially only supposed to be portraits – into a documentation of snippets of their thoughts on what it's like for them, personally, to be a 20-something in this day and age. I wanted to make work where the viewer can relate to the person in the photograph.” But even though graduation has come and gone, Jones assures us that she isn’t finished: “I'm nowhere near done with it yet! I still go on 'Twenty Something hunts in the street and run after someone as if I'm about rugby tackle them. I'm also fortunate enough to have friends who are okay with me shoving a camera in their face.”

ALEX

“I think the biggest thing for me is that I have to remind myself that I'm not the same person I was when I was in my late teens. Everything's changed, and you have to grow up in order to get the things you want and become the person you've always said you're going to become when you're older. Saying that though, I'm a lot more wiser, a lot more open minded and a lot more confident than what I used to be. Who knows if that's going to stay the same by the time I hit my thirties.”

KAI

“It's fine, I suppose. I mean, the only thing I find difficult is the money situation, and not having your parents there to constantly help you and saving for things that you actually need and not just want. Apart from that, I'm fine with how things are at the moment. I've sort of liked being thrown into it.”

KEZIAH

“Your twenties are the only time when you can truly do whatever you want. There's so much freedom but it feels like you're being judged for what direction you decide to go in. For me, it feels like I'm having to please other people's constructions of what a twenty something should be or do.”

NICK

“With so much stigma attached to being a 20-something, older adults assume that you're just another preppy lightweight who knows nothing. But it's hard to convince them otherwise when there's little reason for them to believe anything else. 20-somethings are their own worst enemy.”