How do teenagers live? Since 1990, Adrienne Salinger, a professor of photography and media at Syracuse University, has photographed and interviewed 90 of them to find out.
The result is "In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms" (Chronicle Books, $16.95). Sometimes they talked about themselves more than their rooms during the interviews."Everything is crammed into a space that is 12 feet by 12 feet at best," Salinger said, "their past, together with their present and their future."
She met some of the teenagers in malls in New York state, and they introduced her to their friends. Because Salinger wanted to show how they actually lived, she asked them not to change their rooms before she photographed them.
Salinger said she photographed teenagers from the poorest homes to the very wealthy. "The rooms didn't look as different as they might have," she said. "The things they use to define themselves look the same."