About: teens (1997-present)

A combination of factors contributed to this project of photographing teenagers. The primary motivation comes from my perspective as a photography teacher. I have worked with teenagers and young adults from middle school through graduate school, for the last 36 years. As a result, I have come to know many amazing teens in ways that contradict the narrow and conventional visual definitions of teenagers commonly seen in a wide variety of photographic practices, from advertising to the fine arts.

As an artist and consumer of visual imagery, I conceived the series as a response to seeing decades of public images by adults that suggest generic, stereotypical, or mythical representations of teens. I thought it was important to make images that would contrast with images of teens where issues of sexual desire, perfection and inadequacy dominated. And, I wanted to avoid contributing to the notion of teens as one-dimensional, lethargic, victimized, or self-destructive.

Instead, these portraits and texts support the idea that teenagers are very complex. Their outward facades are often their ways to deal with the evolution surrounding identity. The teen years are the beginning of a long process, if not a lifetime, of sorting through one's external and internal worlds. The need to belong, to fit in with others, seeks a balance with what feels right for one's self. To trust the inner self and find a sense of equilibrium beyond it seems to be the ultimate goal for us all.

These teenagers offer images of multi-dimensional individuals possessing character, creativity, vulnerability, strength and wisdom, in their own voices, and in participation with how they are represented.

The photographs, with written texts by the teens, employ a collaborative process where the subjects participate in determining their body language, facial expression, clothing, and frequently, location.

The teens in these portraits convey a variety of attitudes, ideas and ways of being in the world. The portraits are simultaneously about their identity, their well-being, and their purpose, framed by the stated and implied cultural issues surrounding them.

Linda Brooks