Adrienne Salinger’s cult portraits of teenage bedrooms, 30 years on

For a teenager, a bedroom is a sanctuary – a place to experiment, to try on different identities until one finally fits. It was this idea of a self-contained world that inspired Adrienne Salinger’s Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, first published in 1995 as In My Room and shot in the late 80s and early 90s. Her portraits of American teens in their private spaces quickly became a cult favourite, inspiring similar shoots in bedrooms around the world. Now, 30 years later, the series returns in an expanded edition, featuring 26 additional photographs and new texts.

The latest extension of the project arrives at a time when teenagers are more documented than ever: posted in Facebook albums by parents, tagged by friends, and endlessly snapping themselves for stories and grids. Yet the series remains a timeless study on adolescent becoming. When Salinger first began photographing these rooms, teenage life in popular culture was steeped in clichés. The caricatures of cult films and TV shows portrayed teenagers as rebellious, lazy and directionless. “It’s the same when we look at a photograph,” she says. “We immediately categorise who the person is… he’s a skater, she’s a burnout, he’s obviously doped up. I wanted to challenge those snap judgments and let the viewer into the worlds these teenagers were building.”

And those worlds were crammed into bedrooms: walls plastered with posters of punk bands, film icons, and heartthrobs; stacks of well-worn books; childhood trophies; and dirty clothes. In some, skateboards lean against dressers, guitars rest by beds, and diaries sit on bedside tables. The teenagers pose or lounge within the frames. “I was interested in the way their past, their present and their future were crammed into that space – all of the contradictions of coming of age, where you keep shifting your identity,” she explains. “It’s the last time in your life that everything you own will be in one room. It’s before that. It’s before you begin to edit yourself.”

That editing is visible within the images, as if the subjects had taken to collaging together a moodboard of who they are – or hope to be – thumbing through old magazines to circle, cut, and paste the versions of themselves they want to inhabit. It’s a cycle even more pronounced today, with subcultural cycles and aesthetics easier to access and emulate than ever. On platforms like TikTok, teenagers can try on and discard identities with a single swipe – yet this shapeshifting remains something intrinsically special to teenagers. “I feel like people don’t listen to teenagers enough, and that’s a real loss,” Salinger reflects. “They’re at a critical point in their lives – not yet forced to compromise by the demands of adulthood – so they hold strong opinions with a clarity that’s rare. I was impressed by how smart and honest they were, and I wanted to make sure their stories were heard.”

Gaining access to those stories might have seemed daunting for an adult, but Salinger didn’t falter. She met teenagers where they were, often striking up conversations in unexpected places like mall bathrooms or skate parks. Over the course of the series, she shot nearly 200 teens from a range of backgrounds, united only by age and place. “I would just talk to people and say, ‘Can I come home with you and photograph you in your bedroom?’” she recalls. “I know that sounds insane now... but all the teenagers said yes.”

Once inside, Salinger would stay for hours, carefully lighting the space and conducting video interviews that later became text segments in the book. “I wanted each person to have as much of a voice as possible,” she explains, despite the obvious intrusion of equipment and an outsider in their private sanctuaries. That voice is now memorialised once again in Teenagers in Their Bedrooms – a reminder that shapeshifting is an essential part of growing up, and of figuring out who you want to, and are meant to, be.