From May 19 to August 11, 2007, the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s Project Room 2 presents Lincoln High ROTC: Jona Frank, two three channel videos—Julia, Drill Team (TRT: 1 min., 2002) and Bravo Company, Squad Drill Competition (TRT: 6 min., 2002)—about members of the Junior ROTC program at Lincoln High in the San Francisco Bay area. This is the first Southern California museum exhibition by the Santa Monica-based artist. For ten years, Frank has used photography and film to examine and document the American adolescent experience. Her body of work grows out of extensive interviews and surveys with young people around the country. Frank met with teenagers from all socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds and spoke with them about their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, with particular attention to understanding their fears and desires about being accepted into a peer group.

Frank began interviewing members of Lincoln High’s Junior ROTC in 1998. At Lincoln High, as at other schools across the country, there is controversy surrounding the Army-run program, which can be taken to fulfill physical education requirements. According to the U.S. Army ROTC website, the focus of the program is “To motivate young people to be better citizens.” Some parents, students, and school administrators are concerned that the program is in fact simply a subtle marketing technique to develop a recruit pool once the Junior ROTC members graduate from high school.

From the start of her focus on Lincoln High’s Junior ROTC, Frank observed the dualities at play in this particular experience—a culturally diverse Junior ROTC membership training to embrace a strict and singular vision; and efforts to adhere to group rules confounded by an adolescent penchant to challenge authority and find a way to play. At once dispassionate and intimate, Frank’s videos reveal the timeless and endearingly awkward vulnerability of young people on the threshold of adulthood, searching for personal meaning in their lives by mimicking postures and responses that seek to efface individuality.

Jona Frank is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer. In 2004, she published her first monograph, High School. (Arenas Street Publishing). In 2003, she was awarded a Wattis-Artist-in-Residence as part of her participation in Bay Area Now, a triennial survey of Bay Area artists. Frank’s first short film, Catholic School, premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded Best Bay Area Short Film at the 1999 San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2001, she was commissioned by PBS to direct a film about a high school in the Bay Area. The resulting film, Between Classes, profiled six social groups at Palo Alto High School. She is currently at work on a book about evangelical youth and a video series on skateboarding. Frank lives and works in Santa Monica.