When I was a Freshman at Bard College in the late nineties, I was awed by Jill Frank's photography senior thesis To Die 4, a series of candid, yet immaculately lit black and white images of various competitions and nebulous college parties. They resonated through their ability to find poems among unsteady moments and transcend event-photography clichés. I didn't know Jill at the time, but these photographs have stood with me to this day. Fast forward more than a decade, and Frank has continued to make work that blurs the boundaries between tableaux, documentary and reportage. In her most recent series  Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained, she approaches teenagers and young adults, focusing on the period of late youth that hovers on awkward and tender. Her mix of portraits and photographs of rituals like beer pong and keg stands tread somewhere between youthful nostalgia and an outsider's gaze, a tension she captures eloquently with her large-format 4x5 film camera. Throughout this work, there is a confusion about how much is orchestrated, what moments are genuine, and where Jill personally fits into the mix. I spoke with Jill to learn more.