Adrienne Salinger

Adrienne Salinger (born 1956) is an American award-winning photographer and educator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Recognized for her images of the life of teens taken in their bedrooms, she is currently a professor of photography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Adrienne Salinger was born in 1956 in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Berkeley, California, by politically radical parents. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, in 1977. Later, she obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. 

Salinger achieved much prominence with her photographs of teens taken in their bedrooms. Her fascination with living independently begun with reading the stories of Pippi Longstocking—Astrid Lindgren's fictional main character in an eponymous series of children's books. Although she worked on this series in the 80s, it was her 90s images that became an inspiration for designer Christopher Shannon's SS/15 menswear collection, and a regular influence for Hollywood set decorators. The photographs were intended as a revolt against the media portrayal of adolescence, the films, television, and magazines that imposed (often adult) ideals onto young people. She met her teenage subjects in malls, in restaurants, on the street, and through friends, and told them not to clean their rooms, not to prepare in any way and no parents were allowed. The portraits were eventually featured in Salinger's 1995 book In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms.

In 1998, Salinger published her second photo book Living Solo, in which her photographs are paired with interviews, showing the disparity between what people think of themselves and what the images reveal.

Salinger has exhibited internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Barcelona's Fundación "la Caixa," The New Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Walker Art Center.

In addition, her work is represented in a variety of permanent institutional collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Art Institute of Chicago, the International Polaroid Corporation, the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), and the National Gallery of Canada. 

Salinger is currently a professor of photography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, which has one of the strongest programs for photography in the country. Earlier, she also had a tenured teaching position at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

Salinger has received numerous awards and fellowships, and her work appears in a wide array of books, as well as magazine and newspaper articles. Having lectured in the United States and Canada, she has also been featured on PBS Television, National Public Radio, MTV, and Radio National Australia.

• 1995: In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, with an introduction by Tobias Wolff. For the book, Salinger visited the bedrooms and lives of 100 teenagers from around the country; 43 were selected for the book. (Chronicle Books)
• 1998: Living Solo. For this book, she chose as her subject people who live alone. (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
• 2007: Middle Aged Men (Nazraeli Press)