Teen-Agers in Their Bedrooms, Before the Age of Selfies

These days, a secondhand, first-edition copy can promote for a whole lot of {dollars}; in August, the guide can be reissued by D.A.P. as “Adrienne Salinger: Youngsters in Their Bedrooms” in an expanded, good-looking hardback kind, with a price ticket to match. The brand new version confirms the gathering’s standing not merely as a superbly constructed doc of its time (a counterpart of kinds to Nan Goldin’s photographs of younger denizens of downtown New York within the late seventies and early eighties) however as an everlasting work that speaks to our personal second in new and suggestive methods. Teen-agers at present are probably the most photographed era ever, having been snapped incessantly by their mother and father earlier than graduating to selfies and Instagram in their very own proper. In contrast with the self-curated, solely partially self-disclosing footage which are the mainstay of social media, nevertheless, Salinger’s photographs—many accompanied by a brief textual content drawn from prolonged video interviews she carried out—have a disquieting intimacy, providing a way of the perennial perilousness of adolescence. Danielle D., seventeen, shot in Syracuse, New York, in 1990, is pictured seated in a white wicker chair like a throne, a pair of pink ballet pointe sneakers draped over a pushpin board above her mattress. Wearing a stripy T-shirt, khaki shorts, and tube socks, with truthful, cascading curls and a winsome smile, she seems like a paragon of the high-school fashionable lady. The textual content on the alternative web page reveals that, after a manic episode, Danielle spent thirty days in a psychological hospital and was recognized as bipolar. Within the {photograph}, she is on lithium.Salinger’s topics are drawn from varied walks of life, however their generational commonalities appear extra vital than their socioeconomic variations. She notes that, no matter a person’s background, the rooms have been at all times roughly the identical dimension. “They’re all about twelve by twelve,” Salinger says now. “And all of their world is in that house—their previous, current, and future.” There may be Amie D., seventeen, from Fayetteville, New York, who has a Nantucket poster on her wall and says her favourite designer and profession position mannequin is Donna Karan. A number of pages away is Auto C., eighteen, from Liverpool, New York, who has a tattoo of a query mark on his chest and a Betsy Ross flag graffitied with an anarchist image on his wall. He tells Salinger that his father hit him with a hatchet when he was 9 or ten years previous. His father, he says, “is wise, however not properly educated. He didn’t rise above it.”