Catherine Edelman Gallery
Chicago, IL
January 9 to March 7, 2009
Faduma Mohamed, age 16, Said Ahmed, age 15, Minneapolis, MN,
July 12, 2004
© Robin Bowman
(press release)
Robin Bowman's five-year journey into the heart of teenage America resulted in a series of 419 collaborative portraits, in which she shares her discoveries of a generation now coming of age. In searing and intimate contemporary photographs, presented with the young people's own voices of passion, pride, embarrassment, lust, dread, pain, anxiety, instability and rage, the book charts the coming of age of the largest generation ever in America, almost double the 1960s baby boomers.
In her exploration, she traveled 21,731 miles to photograph teens in every region of the country and every socioeconomic group: from a Texas debutante to teenage gang members in New York City; from a drag queen in Georgia to a coal miner in West Virginia. Her intimate photographs invite individuals to look more closely at how complex challenges facing a rising generation of Americans have informed individual identities. The photographs also ask us to reconcile preconceived ideas and stereotypes of teenagers with the diversity of individuals in the portraits.
Jason Kramer, age 18, Rockland, ME, July 5, 2002
© Robin Bowman
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