"Salinger stipulated that her subjects were not to tidy up their rooms before she arrived—as if. With sessions lasting several hours, her intention was to grant as much agency as possible to the teens involved, and to counter the inevitable power imbalance between herself and her subjects.... Another rule was that parents had to stay out of the way. Even so, their presence leaks into many of the images and interviews. Greg H., pictured at thirteen in Kirkland, Washington, in 1984, has a mural of clouds, a mobile of planet-like orbs, and a telescope, all bespeaking parental investment in cultivating a wholesome interest. Anne I., sixteen, shot in 1990, in upstate New York, sits on her bed, with a white fluffy Teddy bear by her side and wall art of Jim Morrison hanging behind her, the two aptly illustrating the tenuous cusp between childhood and adolescence.... What appealed to Salinger about portraying people of that age, she says now, was the way in which they were so uncompromising. 'When you are a teen-ager, I think, you are really clear about what your viewpoints are,' she says. 'I wanted that fierceness of having your point of view without also having to pay rent, or think about having a job, or anything....'"
How would you like a photographer approaching your "interesting-looking kid" and asking to photograph them in their bedroom for hours and enforcing a rule that you stay out of there? It's so creepy by present-day standards that I'm surprised to see the artist vaunted in the New Yorker without questioning the intrusion on the child.
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37 comments:
The photographer is a woman. That reduces the creepy factor by 53%. And, a rule that parents had to "stay out of the way" still allows for plenty of oversight.
"...For the new edition of the book, Salinger had to track down several of her subjects, now grown up, some with kids of their own, some no longer living....."
How come? Does a new edition of the same book mean that the subjects have to sign a release or something? I would have thought the original would have sufficed if the same photo was being used.
She would ask kids to let her in their room, kick out their parents, and let her take pictures of them. If that didn't work, she would ask if they wanted some candy, or to come play with her puppy in the back of her creepy van. I saw that after-school special.
a young Ann and Nancy Wilson - what luck.
It's creepy, and it was my parents' house, not mine. They were not unpleasant about it, but we were encouraged to hang only awards and ribbons on our walls, such as my prize for best pumpkin (milk-fed) at the Dutchess County Fair, and my best essay from Montgomery Wards, celebrating the centennial by imagining myself as the American flag at key points in our history. All of them gory, localized disasters. I wore a colonial outfit to the ceremony.
Obviously, I had no friends, so rock posters would not have helped matters anyway.
I also won the most creative macrame at the fair several years in a row. My intense older brother beat out actual farmers for many agricultural products. My younger brother taught himself whimsial taxidermy. He was fond of squirrels playing poker.
We would have been a voyeur's delight for these photographic jerks. Welcome to the Dollhouse.
From the article…
“”When you are a teen-ager, I think, you are really clear about what your viewpoints are,' she says. 'I wanted that fierceness of having your point of view without also having to pay rent, or think about having a job, or anything....'”
What world is this? Having a part time job as a teenager was the norm. One would often have some experience mowing lawns, delivering papers, or babysitting before getting the first teen job. If your parents owned a small business, you started even younger still.
The Beach Boys sang it best…
In My Room
https://youtu.be/WJ12fKVuHsM?si=sUffq402neRvSKv_
There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room (in my room)
In this world, I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room
In my room (in my room)
Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday
Now it's dark, and I'm alone, but I won't be afraid
In my room
In my room (in my room)
You really like Iron Maiden../
The women don’t think of themselves as creepers. There was that hay lady what took exquisite photos of that beautiful farmer girl with the spooky blue eyes, holding chickens and such. Definitely not into her in a sexual way. Nosiree…not anything like that woman who joyfully wrote about seducing an underage girl, helping her shop for lingerie, then taking her home and having sex with her. A real public service this is…
Democrat Party members are all about intruding on children while preventing the parents from supervising. The Party of pedophiles and 300,000 unaccompanied minors smuggled into the USA believes that your children belong to the state.
Yes we were so recently a high-trust society it is almost startling to see what has become of us.
“a young Ann and Nancy Wilson - what luck.”
Go sell crazy on you elsewhere. We all full up.
The photos in the 1990's all look more curated than the ones from the 1980's. Not sure if it's the era or the location. The 1980 photos are from the Seattle, Washington area. The 1990's are from the Syracuse, New York area.
I find this sort of thing extremely weird, and its good everyone else seems to think so in 2025. BTW, did the kids get a piece of the action, since she sold a book?
BTW, i find teenagers incredibly boring and I don't care about their "fierceness" of their POV. Most teenagers just believe what the Media, or their peers, or their parents tell them. They're too stupid and ignorant to have any real intellectual independence.
ChatGPT rewrite of In My Room:
There's a world where she can come and see the realest me
In my room
In my room (in my room)
With her lens, she waits and watches what I choose to be
In my room
In my room (in my room)
Do my dreaming, slow revealing
Hold my pose, then stray
Show my trophies, hide my feelings
Let the silence say
Now it's dark, and I’m alone—but not erased or played
In my room
In my room (in my room)
Here's Grok's rewrite:
There's a world where she can go, approach me 'cause I look "interesting"
In my room
In my room (in my room)
In this world, I lock out parents, let the session last for hours
In my room
In my room (in my room)
Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday
Now it's dark, and she's still here, but I agreed to let her stay
In my room
In my room (in my room)
Eh. They're both kind of bad. Humans can do better!
I would have found it creepy in the 90s as well.
My first thought, before reading it though. Was "creepy".
"Cult" is a way to introduce things no one has ever heard of as though they have been important phenomena for years.
"How would you like a photographer approaching your "interesting-looking kid" and asking to photograph them in their bedroom for hours and enforcing a rule that you stay out of there?"
Only if it was someone trustworthy, like that nice Ghislaine Maxwell.
And after the session and when the photos were developed and printed, the photographer masturbated to the images.
The pictures were great. A lot of Tiger Beats were sold back then. I don't think teenagers have as many pictures of celebrities on their walls. At least my kids don't.
My bedroom from 1984 would have paled in comparison to all of those photos in the article- no posters of any kind by that point- just a bed, my cheap set of weights, my stereo and LP collectin, and a large wardrobe.
Teenagers are only "children" when they're shot/murdered by other "children".
So much wood paneling.
Anthropogenic Identities are capable of discernment and creativity. Automated Intelligence is capable of rote assembly.
Around 1966-67, I started to "hang" posters on my bedroom wall -- with Scotch tape. My dad got mad; he said it would damage the paint when I removed it. I wanted my room to be "cool" when I had friends over. I was blessed with a giant bedroom, longer than the master but with no bathroom. It was divided by my bookcases and the side towards the front of the house had cheap couches (donated by an older cousin) so my buddies and I could hang out and not have to sit on the floor or on my bed. Funny how, after that experience, I had the desire to live in a "cramped" space: years later, living on a houseboat for two years outside my waterfront cafe. You _can_ do with less.
Do we know where the heavy-metal twin sisters are today?
Asking for a friend.
RR
JSM
john mosby said...
Do we know where the heavy-metal twin sisters are today?
https://youtu.be/qK0ac3RAUnE?si=M-srDqH8eJonLr3-
If you had posters on the wall, you sort of knew who you were and what you aspired to be, even if it was all silly adolescent stuff. If you didn't have the posters, you might be in trouble identitywise. Nowadays, I suppose everything is on the kids' phones, rather than on their walls.
Iman - ?????
There has been a great change in public attitudes to photography in general, mostly affecting the genre of "street photography". The old classics by Cartier Bresson et al could mostly not be made today. There have been great changes in even the last 20 years. The public, anywhere, is far more suspicious and hostile.
A low trust society progresses with liberal leanings that have been celebrated, legalized with ethical consensus detached from moral temperance. Caveat emptor.
Fitz: ha! I forgot about GLOW.
RR
JSM
'I wanted that fierceness of having your point of view without also having to pay rent, or think about having a job, or anything....'
Democrats want to let these people vote.
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