We are all of us emigrants from a country we can remember little of and we try to reconstruct it, but all that is most important about it escapes us. We feel that we have never been so happy since we left it or so miserable, but we can’t remember how the happiness felt or the quality of the misery : we watch our children’s eyes for hints. Knowledge has altered the taste of every emotion ... Graham Green, «The lost chilhood» Over five years the photographer Lillian Birnbum has followed young Adah and her friends, creating a diaristic serie capturing moments of innocence and fragility, play and seriousness. Some partly staged, most of them snap shots, the photographs become reflections on childhood and the first discovery of the young girls feminity. The continous work has made the camera a part of the girls’ lives and an accomplice in the construction of their identity. The idealistic spaces, the girl’s room, water, the toys, are symbolic for their transitional state and the images become a relic of childhood as these young girls are moving on to an unknown territory. The photographs, which are lyrical and at times contemplative, are rich in references and engage the fields of journalism, fine-art and fashion. Almost as an anthropological study, they witness of the young girls’ process: the transition into adolescence.