It was 1965 in Brooklyn, when Michael Dunn found himself being reprimanded in Brother Thadeus’s office for dressing inappropriately for Catholic school. “Next time I see you, we’ll be dressed according to the school code,” Thadeus commanded. In front of the principal’s office with the new rebel in her denim jacket with patchwork badges, the poetry teacher warns her, “The nose ring – you might wanna take that out.” From the regimented uniforms of ‘Heaven Help Us’ (1985) and ‘Loving Annabelle’ (2006), Andrea Modica’s ‘Catholic Girls’ is unperturbed in flouting rules, where thick kohl-rimmed eyes styled with a pompadour and a leather jacket radiate the rebellion of a motorcycle club, rather than a classroom.
Modica grew up in an all-girls Catholic school in Brooklyn. It was a different time in Catholic schooling, she admitted, which was good for her. “There were many radical nuns,” she said, “And quite a number of younger teachers in their 20s who were encouraging us to have opinions and speak our minds. I wouldn’t be here, talking to you, had I not had the art teacher Len Bellinger – she kind of turned me around.” It was to see her, that Modica stepped on to a train to Brooklyn from Yale, where she was a photography student in 1984.
