The mid-20s are what I’ve come to think of as a scrappy period (I say this as someone squarely in the thick of it. See the Dazed guide to surviving your quarter-life crisis here). The careless freedom of adolescence is gone, yet full-and-proper adulthood remains somewhat half-built. You spend these years assembling a self; one flat move, one flatmate, one heartbreak at a time. First jobs fold into identities. The question, ‘What do you do?’ becomes inescapable, almost the default inquiry at every house party, murmured over bad mixes and even worse mixers.

However, there is something stubbornly open about this era. There is a rawness to being 20-something in real time, carving out, on your own terms, the life you hope to keep living. It is precisely this precarity that Cold Feet, a new exhibition curated by Christina Libri at Southern & Partners in Soho, takes as its subject. Five photographers – Timon Benson, Georgia Jones, Hamish McMillan, Kendal Walker, and Elena Bianca Zagari – all emerging young artists making work in a moment that resists resolution. 

TIMON BENSON, MANCHESTER

Following a touring solo exhibition last year, Manchester-based photographer Timon Benson recently showed as part of New Contemporaries at South London Gallery. For Cold Feet, he presents Impasse (2025), a portrait of his long-time collaborator Liv Jarman, photographed in her bedroom on an extended 1/4 shutter. Jarman sits at the centre of the bed applying lipstick. Powder-pink sheets and flushed cheeks, a deep rouge lip, half-finished wine. Everything is held in a gorgeously raw, intimate state of becoming. Hailing from Manchester, Benson makes photographs with a “sustained immediacy”, sitting, as he puts it, “on the edge of choreography but kept in real space”. The logic is deliberate. “The way people interact with the camera is dramatically different than it was before […] as soon as the camera comes up, the performance element is there.” Even a private room becomes staged, subtly, almost imperceptible.

What’s your relationship with Dazed?

Timon Benson: I’ve been in it a couple of times […] People often don’t think outside of London, but Dazed have always covered Manchester, the North, the scene we have here. It’s always been welcomed.

What do you want to achieve by 30?


Timon Benson: As long as I can sustain making work and continue to engage with it, that's everything.

If you weren't a photographer, what would you be doing?


Timon Benson: An audiologist; that’s what my undergraduate degree is in. I quit my job two weeks ago!

What’s one piece of art you’d like to own?


Timon Benson: Montparnasse, Andreas Gursky.

If you could go for a coffee with any artist, who would it be?

Timon Benson: Mark Rothko.

GEORGIA JONES, PARIS

Georgia Jones’ first experimented with photography in her early teens at house parties, armed with a disposable camera from Urban Outfitters, the kind with coloured film pre-printed on the negative so the image and the pattern bled together. “They looked terrible, but I just loved the concept.” It was about ‘ownership’, she explains, wanting to own a moment, make something and articulate how she sees. Today her images are a far cry from those early Instax Minis, with major editorial credits including Willy Chavarria for Dazed and portraits of Marina Abramović for Saatchi Yates, alongside campaigns for Issey Miyake, Byredo, and Jawara Alleyne. London-born and Paris-based, Jones’ photographs are glossy, light-hearted and deliberately so. “Whenever I shoot, I’m like, ‘We’re having fun, we’re experimenting, we’re so lucky we get to do this. We may as well play.’  That element of play is really important.” For Cold Feet, Jones shows a triptych drawn from three separate shoots, all fun, flirty, and formally assured. Brigit (2026), a wry riff on the classic pin-up, sits somewhere between Mario Testino’s towel series and a John Waters fantasy. “I’ve got no idea if I’m going to still be able to do this in ten years; I may as well have fun while I'm doing it.”

What are you looking at for inspiration?

Georgia Jones: Katherine Hamnett slogan T-shirts, and old i-D bylines. Terry Jones is the king of kings

What’s your relationship with Dazed?

Georgia Jones: I interned for them when I was 16, doing events and marketing. More recently, Ester, the art director, asked me to shoot Willy Chavarria. I’ve always loved Dazed, the people, the parties, the vibe, everything.

If you weren't a photographer, what would you be doing?

Georgia Jones: A psychologist.

If you could have a coffee with any artist, who would it be?

Georgia Jones: Tracy Emin, fuck it. Actually, Sarah Lucas. No, Tracy! She’s the best.

What’s one piece of art you’d like to own?

Georgia Jones: Oh my God, that's impossible. Maybe a Joan Jonas video work.

HAMISH MCMILLAN, LONDON

Hamish McMillan first came to photography working at IDEA, where exposure to artists and photographers quietly opened out what felt possible. It was there he learned many of his practical skills, assisting the revered co-founder Angela Hill. McMillan’s own documentary photography has the logic and intimacy of a postcard, snapshots taken on pilgrimage and sent home. They are not tourist holiday pics but rather quieter, personal vignettes. "I’m always excited by uncertainty,” he says. “I go there with no idea what’s going to happen.” Perhaps the methodology is inherited: both parents are radio broadcasters, and there is something of the reporter in his images – dispatches from on the ground. The work occupies the stillness of Luigi Ghirri and the chance encounter of Martin Parr. For Cold Feet, he shows images from time spent in the States and Mexico, carrying what he describes as “a melancholy and stillness”. He says, “A lot of people are too busy. You’ve walked down that street 150 times. You get to a point where you’re not looking at things. I’m always trying to look at things.”

If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be doing?

Hamish McMillan: A mountain guide. 

What’s one piece of art you’d like to own?

Hamish McMillan: This painting by Noah Davis, of a lake – I love the greens and small pops of red. 

Describe your practice in three words?

Hamish McMillan: Tranquil, observant, detached.

Who’s one living artist you'd like to go for coffee with?

Hamish McMillan: Lana Del Rey.

What’s your relationship with Dazed?

Hamish McMillan: I used to get given the magazine by my grandma because she thought that I should work in fashion.

ELENA BIANCA ZAGARI, NAPLES 

Elena Bianca Zagari’s ongoing series Sex Diaries is built from personal stories by young women, retold and reimagined as a visual diary that moves through “discovery, appropriation, and aftermath”. Part documentary, part fiction, the images began when Zagari was 14 in Naples and ends, for now, at 23. She tells Dazed, “Everything I say comes from my personal experience. It has to go through me.” These borrowed, reconstructed intimacies circle one central preoccupation: “The idea that you can never really return to the same moment twice. With each return, memory changes slightly.” Each iterative display of the series takes a slightly different form, adding another layer to the ongoing work. From sweat-stained bedding to an underwater plug and a topless portrait, there is a palpable warmth and bodily affect to the images. Together, the composite truths build an unfiltered portrait of girlhood. Working across photography, moving image, and text, Zagari has shown at the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and Soho Revue. Sex Diaries remains ongoing. "What’s more Cold Feet than an unfinished project," she laughs.

If you could get a coffee/ pint with any artist, who would it be?

Elena Bianca Zagari: Probably Nan Goldin.

Describe your practice in three words?

Elena Bianca Zagari: Intense, messy, and long. It doesn’t look like,but it takes a long time. 

What’s one piece of art you’d like to own?

Elena Bianca Zagari: A Francesca Woodman print

Outside of art, what gives you inspiration?

Elena Bianca Zagari: I really like reading Simone de Beauvoir and Kathy Acker. When I read those books, there’s a level of reality in it. It doesn’t feel like anything was hidden, and you’re able to grow with the writer, or experience this process of understanding through someone else’s words. I don’t necessarily remember the specific storyline of each book, but I remember the feeling.

KENDAL WALKER, NEW YORK AND LONDON 

“‘Scrappy’ is the perfect way to describe it,” Kendal Walker says of Efron at Joe's Apartment (2025), a medium-format portrait shot in natural light on display as part of the exhibition. Walker burned the shadows and printed it black and white, as the subject’s bright shorts were a distraction. ”I wanted it to just be about her,” she explains. The image shows close friend Efron holding a lock of hair back, chest open. There is something reciprocal in the gaze. The photograph lingers on the fragile exchange between photographer and subject, where looking becomes a form of recognition. Utah-born and based between London and New York, Walker has shot numerous campaigns and recently presented her debut solo show, Tracks, which showed at Manor Place, London, in June. 

What’s your relationship to Dazed?

Kendal Walker: I grew up in Utah, in a small town that didn’t have a lot of access to art spaces or anything like that. Dazed was something I always would order and have at home because it has that accessibility where you can see it from anywhere. I shot for Dazed’s Shadow Issue, and have photographed a few musicians for them. 

What’s one piece of art you’d like to own? 

Kendal Walker: Wolfgang Tillmans’ The State We’re In, A. It’s all water and so striking.

Describe your practice in three words? 

Kendal Walker: I would say... intentional, open, and experimental. 

What do you hope to achieve by 30?

Kendal Walker: If I’m still making images with people that I love, I’ll be happy.

Cold Feet is showing a Southern and Partners (46 Lexington Street, W1F 0LP) from 10 July until 1 August 2026. The private View takes place on Thursday 9 July from 6-9pm.