Cheer Me Up

• Photographer
  Assaf Matarasso, France
• Cheer Me Up is a long-term photographic project exploring adolescence through competitive cheerleading in France. Developed over more than a year, it brings together around 80 analog images and approaches cheerleading as a subcultural system shaped by repetition, discipline, and collective dynamics. Moving beyond spectacle, the work focuses on what surrounds it: waiting, tension, and subtle negotiations within the group. Rooted in American culture yet reinterpreted locally, the series traces how identity is formed between visibility, belonging, and individuality.