Inside the bedrooms of American youth during the ’80s and ’90s

Founding father of analytical psychology Carl Jung proposed the notion of the home as the symbol of self – the eminent psyche from which both dream and theory are born. From a young age, children are imbued with intuitive understanding, transforming their bedrooms into personal sanctuaries that blossom as they grow. Coming of age in the Bay Area during the early ​’70s, photographer Adrienne Salinger remembers a feeling of intimacy and wonder as hanging out in her friends’ bedrooms. Each room was a living diorama where personality and character took centre stage.

It became increasingly clear to Salinger that authentic teen voices were discarded in favour of consumer narratives that could be endlessly packaged and resold. ​“Attention must be paid,” Salinger says, pointing to a passage from Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, Death of a Salesman. ​“A lot of people looked at it like [protagonist Willy Loman] was such a loser, but I didn’t. I thought, that’s true – attention should be paid. And I paid attention to teenagers.” 

With the publication of Adrienne Salinger: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms (D.A.P.), the artist returns to where it all began for a captivating portrait of Generation X during the ​’80s and ​’90s. First published in 1995, Salinger expands her groundbreaking monograph to include 26 additional photographs that reveal a profound connection between artist and sitter born of mutual curiosity, trust, and respect. 

• Read next: Memories of San Francisco’s 1990s radical lesbian scene

For the project, Salinger spoke at length with the teens, recording and transcribing their interviews into hypnotic soliloquies that charge her photographs with meaning and purpose. ​“It’s important to listen to people, and teenagers have strong viewpoints; part of the reason they’re able to is because they are not paying the water bill,” she says.“They’re old enough to know how things work and have opinions on it. People act like teenagers aren’t smart, but that’s not true.” 

With Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, Salinger crafts incisive portraits that go beyond cliché tropes of teen life, subverting assumptions with every frame. Taken together, they foster a sense of the implicit web that interconnects us through the butterfly effect. Mormon teen Larry P. sits topless in his room in front of a huge speed limit sign with a campy horror head nestled in his lap. He has plans for college, and a two-year missionary trip to lands untold. ​“You devote your whole time to the Church by converting people,” he says, while gazing from the portrait with a steely glint. 

• Read next: In photos: California’s youth squaring up to an uncertain future

Larry P. stands in striking contrast to Salinger’s portrait of Jamaican-born teen Al-Vaughn B., as a reminder of imperialism’s foreign and domestic agendas. Wearing a Syracuse 1988 t‑shirt that reads, ​“Too Black! 2 Strong!” — the opening bars of the Jungle Brothers’ hip house classic, ​‘I’ll House You’. Al-Vaughn tells Salinger about a run-in with the police, who singled him out for questioning because he was Black, then let him know that come 16, Al-Vaughn would be on his radar. 

With Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, attention is paid to the individual and the collective structures into which we are born. Salinger meets the teens where they are: a willingness to be seen and stand on principle. 

Adrienne Salinger: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms is published by D.A.P.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

Buy your copy of Huck 82 here.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram and sign up to our newsletter for more from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.