The Awkward Age
Born in La Grange in 1958 and raised in Bedford Park, Missbach was somewhat of an outsider, both because she was raised by a single mother and because she “had opinions, as opposed to just watching TV.” When she was about 12, her mom took her by bus to a peace demonstration in Washington. Intensely aware of the 60s, its counterculture and demonstrations, “I wanted to be older so bad. I was exasperated because I was so little. My room was always quite a mess–I had all kinds of posters up, rock posters and cars and concert tickets. I spent a lot of time there, staring at the walls, figuring out how to get away.”
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At Argo Community High School in Summit, “there was a lot of racism. The blacks and whites and Puerto Ricans didn’t get along. There were fights every day. You could stay after school and do an after-school activity, or run and hope to get home safe.” Schoolwork was so easy “it was boring. My girlfriend and I graduated in three years just to get the heck out of there.” In the meantime she hung out with her girlfriend after school and with “loser boyfriends. They didn’t go to the prom. They did drugs and got wasted–the bad-boy syndrome. Those were the ones I was attracted to. I was totally bored and confused. We were just real brats.” She spent her time smoking in the woods and drag racing. “You could race from neighborhood to neighborhood and the police would be confused. They’d have to radio from one town to another. It was cool–dangerous and fun.” Winning a prize in a poster contest led to a major in product design and advertising at Southern Illinois University, where “I was much happier–my brain kicked in.” After graduation she moved to Chicago, where she was a partner in a clothing and costume shop called Studio Sew-Sew, now closed, and later worked as a stylist, finding props for TV commercials.
The inevitable critiques of Missbach’s focus on the “other” led her to start photographing white kids. Starting with nieces and nephews of friends, she was soon approaching kids at Great America. She also photographs teens at an annual Unitarian summer camp for families that she attended as a child. Missbach finds a similar wide range of ambition among each group of kids: some of the street toughs wanted to become electricians, while one stunningly beautiful Lake Forest girl “was not about to do homework–she wanted to be cute and stay dumb.” In a media-saturated world, “I think they see that they could get instant success like the overnight media sensations, flavors of the month. I think sometimes they forget that it takes hard work and study to create a foundation.”
