What happens when you shift the camera’s focus from performers to listeners? Do we have anything in common, when the band is not on stage to bring us together? These were the questions Gabrielle Ravet posed, gathering thirty My Chemical Romance devotees in a Brooklyn apartment for her debut solo show A Fangirl’s Diary.
French photographer Gabrielle Ravet first felt the pull of fandom as a twelve-year-old in a strict Catholic school, where fingerless skeleton gloves and heavy kohl signalled tiny revolts. Borrowing her father’s camera, she began documenting those sparks—a habit that grew into a practice treating fan culture with the gravity usually reserved for headline acts.
The Brooklyn shoot that anchors A Fangirl’s Diary, on view at Unruly Collective until 18 May 2025, was a twelve-hour sprint. Strangers morphed into a chorus the moment the playlist started, eyeliner doubling as armour while stories of tattoos and tour marathons flew across the room. Ravet set the lights, then let the fans build their own utopia.
Though “emo nostalgia” floods today’s algorithms, Ravet anchors her portraits in a wider tradition of girl-driven image-making, framing black denim and jagged fringes as symbols of agency, not costume. The work also counters the toxicity she faced online for following the band on tour, proving that real-world bonds beat comment-section crossfire.
By dimming the spotlight on rock icons and illuminating the crowd, A Fangirl’s Diary argues that the loudest, most enduring anthems are often the ones sung offstage, together.
