Morgan Maher’s bedroom is a place where girls share their deepest, darkest secrets. It’s where they confess their latest crush or the last time they cried, where they play dress up or cuddle in her crumpled white sheets. As if at a slumber party, Morgan joins them, capturing all of these intimate moments on film. Though she started taking these photographs five years ago in her tiny New York apartment, it was only last summer that she began to consider them a complete body of work. “I printed them and laid them all out because I was like, ‘Fuck, am I just taking the same picture over and over again?’ she explained over the phone. “Then I realised it needed to be a book.” And so, Girls in Bed was born.
Morgan’s girls pose against the backdrop of a singular white wall, the images taking on a soft, saccharine quality. The book — her very first, published by Friend Editions — is a playful exploration of girlhood, owning one’s femininity and reclaiming agency in the most vulnerable of places, the bedroom. It also unintentionally acts as a who’s who of young stars, highlighting her friends who are rising actresses — Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui-Wonders and Courtney Eaton — musicians — Sabrina Fuentes and Harmony Tividad – and cool girls like Enya Umanzor and Gabrielle Richardson. Morgan captures her muses centrefold style: wearing lace underwear, printed jammies or knee-high socks with satin bows; taking a page from Morgan’s own signature, coquettish style.
“The photograph is obviously the final product, but what really brings me joy, and part of the art, is sculpting with intimacy, that intimacy you experience when two girls are sitting in bed sharing their secrets,” the 27-year-old photographer says. “Based off of personal experiences, I didn’t always feel safe in the bedroom, and that conversation would happen with some of the girls that I was photographing as well, which is truly heartbreaking… I feel safe in a bedroom again, and my level of honesty and openness to just create something that was very special for women and girls, that created a safe space.”
There’s a rawness to the images that reflects the collaborative nature of Morgan’s work. She saw each shoot as a casual hangout, and when girls would ask what they should wear, she gave them as little instruction as possible. “I would never say anything specific,” she remembers. “Like what do you feel your best in, and what do you feel like? Are you feeling flirty? Are you feeling cosy? Are you feeling sleepy?” Though, of course, there was no wrong answer to Morgan’s prompts. “She sees the best in you and convinces you to see it too,” her friend Talulah Brown wrote in the book’s introduction.
Having grown up outside of Baltimore, Maryland, Morgan first started taking photographs when she was in middle school. In order to “not be chaotic and freak out” about what to wear each day, she took pictures of all her favourite outfits — “Limited Too… Gap core” – and taped them to the wall of her closet to ease her decision making process. This evolved into playing dress up with friends after school, and taking pictures of their looks just for fun. “I always just loved girl world,” she says, adding that she felt more like a tomboy at the time. “[Femininity] wasn’t really something that I totally felt confident in embracing.”
Later, Morgan went on to study at Savannah College of Art and Design, and after graduating she moved to New York to pursue photography in-house at Marc Jacobs in 2016. Once she was living on her own in the city — though she’s recently traded coasts for Los Angeles — all of her initial interests came rushing back and then some. “I feel like my entire life I was into all things teenage girl, purity, girlhood, all of that, and when I finally had my own apartment is when I realised that I had the freedom to play and cry and scream and just experience the spectrum of emotions that were existing inside of me,” she explained. “So, I started taking photos because the only place that I really felt safe was in my apartment, in my bedroom.”
Though Morgan’s swapped her white sheets for hot pink cheetah print, she’s created an entire aesthetic world that extends far beyond her four bedroom walls. Here, we’ve invited some of the Girls in Bed to ask the photographer questions about her upbringing, internet habits and heroes.
Rachel Sennott
What was the first thing you hid from your parents?
Growing up I was only allowed to watch PG movies and shows, I saw Flavor of Love at a friends house when I was 12 or 13. I would sneak it when my parents went to sleep or at sleepovers; it was my little secret. Until I got caught at a friends house and my mom came to pick me up and I was mortified!
Jeannie Sui-Wonders
Currently filled with questions about your love life, but will keep it professional! What was your online life like in middle and high school? And does it inform your creative process now?
When I was in middle school I had a secret AIM account that I would log out of before my parents found it. I never had a MySpace, so I would design fake profiles in Microsoft Word. Then I graduated to Tumblr, where I had my first experience with a girly pen pal from Wisconsin. It was on Tumblr where I shared my photos, poems, diary entries outside of my bedroom for the first time.
Gabrielle Richardson
For as long as I’ve known you, beds have been a recurring theme in your work — what has made them a sacred space for you? 🤍🌹
The bed was a difficult space for me. It’s a place of vulnerability, love, trauma. I’ve shared some of my deepest secrets with friends in my bed, and experienced the most pain. In creating with brilliant women, the bed has taken on a new life — it is safe again. Trust is necessary when you get into bed with someone, and the intimacies and secrets shared are as much of the art as the final photograph.
Orion Carloto
When tethering together a theme for Girls in Bed, did you go into this project with an intimate world in mind, or did it find you?
The way I exist in the world is intentional and gentle by nature. The intimacy between young women permeates my work and is a visual language I have been building since my teens.
Courtney Eaton
If you had to fill an Uber with four people that influenced you the most, who would they be? And what’s your final destination?
I would bring Ronnie Spector, Sofia Coppola, Lil Wayne and Kevin Garnett to an island full of wild roaming baby bunny rabbits.
Talulah Brown
Morgan! So much of what makes your photographs so beautiful is your ability to capture such purity and playfulness. It speaks volumes to your own demeanour and outlook on life. How do you always stay so positive, creatively and personally?
I love to laugh. I laugh at myself constantly and try my best to be present in every moment. I’m obsessed with my cell phone, however the creation with brilliant women in my life in every facet makes me feel so lucky and challenges me to be the best version of myself day in and day out.
Lukita Maxwell
We met in New York City a few years ago. My first memories of us are days-turned-nights at Fanelli’s eating fries and sharing bottles. We both moved to LA recently; if you were to eat ONE of these LA staple foods for the rest of your time here, which would you pick: a Kreation Vegan Caesar Salad, a Starbucks Grilled Cheese or any item from the Erewhon hot bar?
This is a challenging question. Definitely not Erewhon. My heart screams Starbucks, but my arteries are screaming the Kreation Vegan Caesar salad.
Salem Mitchell
Girls in Bed is such a beautiful project. How do you feel you were able to create a safe space for each subject to feel comfortable when shooting them, in what can be seen as a vulnerable, more intimate setting?
Thank you Salem! Ahead of each shoot, the girls and I would have a conversation and they would come in a way that best embodied their personal style and emotions — however they felt their best. Whether that be cute, flirty, cozy, sexy, etc. With that, we were able to create photographs that shared an empowered sense of self in an intimate setting.
Harmony Tividad
What qualities in girls do you feel most drawn to evoke in your photos?
I offer as much vulnerability and honesty in the work as I would like to feel if I were in front of the lens. That lends the collaboration to laughter, secrets and safety. My goal is to create photographs which represent the girls as the purest version of themselves, however they are feeling in that moment.
Girls in Bed is out now via Friend Editions, and available for purchase here.
Credits
All photographs courtesy of Morgan Maher