Gabrielle Ravet, A Fangirl’s Diary24 Images
Throughout decades of recent memory, fandom has carried the culture. Ever since the aged hype around Elvis Presley in the 50s and Beatlemania trailing behind, teenage girls have found community in a shared passion of their favourite artists, especially those pushing the boundaries of what music means to the masses. For heavily-eyelined millennials influenced by MySpace and alt subcultures in the early 2000s, My Chemical Romance were often pinned as the hearthrobs slash rockstars of choice.
Although they would never categorise themselves as emo, their young following at the time had no problem lumping themselves into this label. If anything, they were pop-punk and theatre-kid adjacent.
At 12-years-old and living in France around the Black Parade album cycle in 2009, photographer Gabrielle Ravet became drawn to this darker subculture. “I made two friends in middle school that defined themselves as emo, and their aesthetic completely drew me,” she recalls her first memory of feeling drawn to this vibe, as niche as it was in her home country. “They would wear these fingerless skeleton gloves and dark make-up while attending a very conservative Catholic school that didn’t even allow us to wear sneakers. I was obsessed with how rebellious they were, I wanted to be like that too.”
Inevitably in 2011, Ravet would end up attending a My Chemical Romance concert as her first official gig after weeks of begging her parents for tickets. Around that time, there was a French television documentary about the band claiming that they were the reason that emo teenagers were mentally unstable. This mirrored the undeserved backlash against the community already happening the UK, where the Daily Mail launched an “EMO cult warning for parents” in 2006 followed by the very sensationalist headline, “Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo”, two years later. I would link these but don’t want those right-wing drama queens to get any more traffic.
“I don’t even relate my work to the word ‘emo’ anymore since it’s loaded with nostalgia,” Ravet explains on her relationship with the term. “So many people will be calling themselves ‘elder emos,’ as if it carries a sort of shame to it, and festival marketing strategies play into that.” She was, however, doing everything that springs to mind when you think about fangirls whilst teaching herself photography using her Dad’s borrowed camera. “Camping, fan art, fanfictions: that was the subculture I was a part of, the fangirl.”
Her latest project, A Fangirl’s Diary, reunites 30 My Chemical Romance fans to understand fangirl relationships with each other when the band isn’t on stage in front of them. Shot over one day in February this year, her solo exhibition will explore what happens when you switch the focus from performers to listeners via a collection of attitude-filled portraits. Undeniably, there’s a lot of black clothing and statement haircuts involved in the imagery. While you’ll obviously be required to bring your own head of hair, black tees featuring Ravet’s photo of the MCR logo as a ‘tramp stamp’ tattoo are here.
Inspired by her immediate friends and photographers she met at the International Center of Photography, Ravet also takes notes from books including riot grrrl frontwoman Kathleen Hannah’s autobiography Rebel Girl, Justine Kurland’s photobook Girl Pictures and culture writer Hannah Ewens’ Fangirls which pulls case studies across different subsects of fangirls in a celebration of what it means to be united through a shared passion for music.
“I wanted to photograph fans without the band being there, or without them attending a concert,” she explains. “The idea was to create a safe space where fans could commune together, and only together.” Ravet began feeling frustrated around the project, having shot 30 fans back-to-back in a Brooklyn apartment and feeling exhausted from the day. Once the music started blasting and the girls began screaming along together and strangers would stop to look, it became clear immediately why this work is necessary. “I watch that footage weekly, it was magical.”
Whilst there is evident camaraderie between fans IRL, the online side of fandom can often feel intimidating. “Internet spaces for fan communities have evolved into something very negative and superficial,” Ravet muses, after acknowledging alt subcultures have felt watered down online since the 2020s but that forums have been the home base of fandom since fans have ever existed. “People want to overly consume the object of their passions now, while forgetting celebrities are not just content to be consumed. There’s a lot more objectification of artists.” For MCR fans specifically, the intergenerational fandom has always been active on social media and fansites, even during the band’s breakup years.
This toxic side of obsession can turn into a needlessly competitive and insatiable thirst. “My project was actually born because I was myself targeted by a ton of hate online when I travelled to Australia to see My Chemical Romance,” Ravet admits, knowing full-well what being on the bad side of these attacks can feel like. “I had to delete my accounts, people I had never seen in my life were sending my friends and me death threats because of a tweet they didn’t like.”
Still, the My Chemical Romance fanbase is built on devotion and perseverance and the community is primarily formed by non-cis men, which is uniquely rare for rock bands of that era. “I want to be an advocate of how being a fan is a very cool thing,” says Ravet. “Being a fan clearly made me a better photographer.”
Gabrielle Ravet’s Solo Exhibition A Fangirl’s Diary is on show at Unruly Collective, 200 Cooper St, Brooklyn, NY 11207 from April 18 to May 18.
