With its delicate tendrils, memory can often bend to the shape of our own intentions, biases, and deepest desires. Softening the past into something we long to believe, it is here where an image can become an echo of truth, either comforting us with the illusion of certainty or gently unraveling the story we thought to be true. Under Stolen Besos, photographer Maya Spangler, creates a visual terrain shaped by intimacy, distance, and the strange poetry of becoming. We watch through unguarded spaces with a kind of unscripted honesty, caught in the act of feeling rather than performing and capturing what it means to be in flux: raw, alive, and not yet defined. 

Now, with the release of her debut photo book, Stolen Besos via ENTER BLISS, Maya offers a permanent home for a world that’s long existed in fragments—on hard drives, in diaries, in the blur of memory. Shot over the course of three years, across cities and seasons of personal upheaval, the work drifts through rooms, friendships, and moments that feel half-remembered but deeply felt. 

Opening at Gallery SADE Los Angeles for an adjoining exhibition (on view until June 29th), the book gathers years of work into something tactile and lasting, resisting the disposability of digital culture. It’s more than a collection of images. Stolen Besos is Maya’s own archive, a love letter to the versions of herself that once felt lost or unseen. Bound together, these scenes speak in a language of that’s entirely her own—messy, emotional, unfiltered—and mark a turning point in her  evolution as an artist ready to be witnessed on her own terms.

See here, Maya, reflect on the emotional architecture behind her images—how grief, obsession, and solitude shaped her debut project, and how documenting these ephemeralities became a way to profess both presence and perspective.

‍Did you know from the beginning you were working toward a collected body of work?

This series spans from 2022 to 2025. When I first started shooting, it was purely for myself. I wasn’t thinking about an audience, and I definitely didn’t expect photography to take over my life the way it has. It wasn’t until this past summer, while I was in Warsaw, that everything started to click. I had flown to Europe alone, running from a breakup, and the grief after losing my father, and ended up staying for months. I felt completely unmoored, but in that space, I met the most incredible girls.

Somehow, through all the chaos, the images began to form one continuous story. The themes, the faces, the feelings all started to echo each other. Turning 25 felt like the right time to tie it all together. I feel more grounded in myself now. The emotions that once felt all-consuming have softened. I can experience them without being swallowed. I don’t need outside validation the way I used to. I exist in myself now, and for the first time, I feel free.

Was there a particular photo that became a turning point or anchor for the whole collection?

There are two photos that really anchored this body of work for me, one in Brooklyn and one in Warsaw. The first was of my friend Zoe, shot last February. It was snowing, and I was so hungover. I barely left her bed. I mostly sat there shooting while she ran around outside her window in the snow. My dad had just passed, and I felt so numb, so disconnected. But Zoe was so full of life. That contrast between her energy and my grief captured something I didn’t even realize I was processing at the time.

Then, months later in Warsaw, I met Zosia. She felt ageless. So intelligent, so feminine, like she was carrying something ancient but grounded. She picked me up in her grandpa’s car and drove us to this abandoned church in the countryside. It was exactly like something out of my dreams. Cobwebs, thick layers of peeling wallpaper, feathers scattered across the floor, and this haunted kind of beauty. It felt like heaven, but ruined, lived-in. It was clearly overtaken by squatters at some point. There was a Christmas tree decorated with beer cans. That shoot shifted everything. I knew then that if I ever had a show, I wanted it to feel like that church. A party long over, haunted by the girls in my photos. 

‍Your work feels deeply attuned to girlhood—not just as a stage of life, but almost as a feeling. What does girlhood mean to you right now?

Right now, girlhood means saying fuck it and doing whatever we want while we still can. When I’m with my best friends, we’re always up to something. We want to feel everything intensely, whether it’s a crush that consumes us or stretching the night to see how far it’ll go. It’s not about age, it’s a way of seeing the world through feeling. Through wanting more, always.

Girlhood for me has always been tied to documentation. I’ve been archiving my life since I was 11  through my Tumblr, collecting photos like a diary. Heartbreak, grief, little moments of beauty. The girls in my work feel like fallen heroines, versions of all of us who came of age online and are still figuring out what it means to be seen.

‍There’s often a softness in your images—but also sharpness, mischief, even melancholy. How do you think your work challenges or reclaims the visual language of girlhood / how is femininity romanticized? Do you think softness can be radical?

Softness can absolutely be radical. Especially when it’s chosen, not assigned. So much of girlhood is either romanticized or flattened into something palatable. My work lives in the tension between that softness and something sharper, the mischief & desire. I’m not interested in perfect femininity.

I never like to sit in pain, but I do like to find the edge of it, to let it exist without letting it define me. To be soft and allow pain, but not be consumed by it. That’s where the real power lives, I think. The girls in my images aren’t asking to be protected or saved, they can do that themselves.

I think the most powerful thing is to feel everything fully and still move through the world with a kind of quiet defiance. That’s the version of girlhood I’m interested in.

What recurring themes or obsessions do you find yourself returning to, intentionally or not? Love, longing, and absence feel present in your work—even in silence or blur. Are those emotional tones you're consciously exploring?

Definitely. I always come back to longing, heartbreak, and that sense of quiet aloofness. There’s usually just one girl in the frame. I’ve always been more of a loner, and I think that comes through in the work. A lot of my images feel like the morning after a long night. There’s softness and pleasure, but also this haze like you’re trying to remember how you got there. I love capturing that emotional in-between, where things aren’t fully formed or resolved. It’s less about documenting what happened and more about how it felt. 

Your photos exist in a world where we’re constantly performing for the camera, especially online. How does that affect how you shoot—and how your subjects relate to being seen?

The girls I’m drawn to are the ones who move for me the way they move on their own, just instinct. I don’t need a ton of face or posing. I just need something that feels alive. I want it to feel like I’ve stepped into their world, not the other way around.

The girls I shoot genuinely interest me. They’re intuitive, smart, a little unpredictable. I think, or I hope, because they feel seen by me, they don’t feel the need to perform in the usual way. There’s a mutual trust, and that’s when the real images happen. In a time when so much of our lives are curated, I’m always chasing something a little more accidental. 

‍Looking at your earliest photographs, what do you think’s changed most in your approach or perspective?

In my earlier photographs, I was content with getting just one good shot out of a shoot. But now I’m much more focused on building a world. I care more about the emotional throughline. I’m thinking in terms of story now and how an image fits into something bigger. There’s more depth in the work now, more intention. 

Richard Kern, writing the foreword, adds a layer of legacy and provocation—he’s someone whose work has long explored intimacy, transgression, and subcultural desire. What does it mean to have his voice frame your debut?  

Having Richard Kern write the foreword feels surreal. His work has always meant a lot to me. He’s someone who never apologized for what he was drawn to, and that kind of boldness has been inspiring to me. He didn’t necessarily believe in me from the beginning, and I actually think that makes this even more meaningful. For someone whose legacy is rooted in transgression and subculture to now be framing my debut feels like an acknowledgment that I’ve carved out a space of my own.

What he wrote about me, about how I didn’t disappear, how my photos feel like the morning after a blackout, how there’s something behind my eyes, captured things I wasn’t sure anyone else saw. It’s beautiful to be seen in that way by someone whose work has shaped so much of what I love.

As Kern says, being a “photographer” can feel like a trend, what do you think distinguishes those who last? What keeps the work meaningful for you, beyond the algorithm or aesthetic churn?

I think the people who last are the ones who can’t not make work. They need to be shooting because it’s how they process the world. You can tell when something’s made just for Instagram. There’s a difference between creating for validation and creating because you have something to say. For me, photography has always been about telling a story I couldn’t say out loud. 

‍How do you think the permanence of a photo book contrasts with the fleeting, fast-scrolling nature of social media?

You are forced to slow down. It lives in your space with you, it’s always there to reference. Terry Richardson’s “Skinny” is always on my nightstand and was a huge reference for how I wanted the book to feel although I ended up moving in a different direction. But that kind of intense diary & the title especially. it’s a book I always pull out. I honestly can’t even scroll on my phone. It feels like such a waste of time. The feeds are so convoluted now, it almost feels insulting to post something so personal there. 

If this book is a love letter or a time capsule, who is it addressed to?

It’s addressed to myself at 15, and again at 20. The girl who felt so fucked up, alone, misunderstood, and unsure of her place in the world. The version of me who thought the only way to feel powerful was through being desired, or being a sugar baby. Who dropped out of college and had no idea what kind of life was possible. This book is a reminder to her that she made it by fully leaning into herself. Everything started to shift when I stopped waiting for permission and just created the world I wanted to live in.

Event Images by The Cobrasnake