IDEAS Boston; WGBH Forum Network; Its Complicated: The American Teenager

Day Robin Bowman is with us photo journalist freelance based in Maine. Robin Bowman uses an intimate collaborative approach to photo journalism to tell stories of individual lives that illuminate pressing social and political issues at home and abroad. She has lived with the rebels in the Mexican jungle covered conflict in Bosnia and documented the human cost of tragedies from genocide in Rwanda to child abuse to the aftermath of 9/11 in America. Her work has appeared in major magazines worldwide including The New Yorker The New York Times Magazine life time and Stan in Germany. As a girl Bowman and her family traveled a lot in Europe living in Germany Italy and Belgium. Back in Ohio at a small school in a small town she felt like an outcast and experience that she says primed her for a quote paying attention to the outside world. Her recent book of portraits and interviews with teens called It's Complicated the American teenager won the gold medal in the

best book photography category at the 2008 independent publishers Book Awards and to Lucy Foundation International Photography Awards. Elizabeth beyond the visual director for The New Yorker says of Bowman's work it's complicated. Quote I'm not sure who is more fortunate. We meet America's teenagers through Robin Bowman's engaging portraits or these young adults who have found a deeply compassionate artist. Please join me in welcoming Robin Bowman. Thanks. Thank you so much for including me today. I feel like this has been an incredibly inspiring today and day today. And I thank you Kathy and thank you Elaine for all your gracious support. So I'm here to discuss a topic that is quite old and I'm here probably only to remind us once again what's important.

I don't teach him not to. I don't have that much experience speaking in front of a large group so just bear with me. So what did I do. Well starting in the summer of 2001 I spent five years photographing and interviewing teenagers across the country. With each trip I made eight I packed my car as though I had to live in it and set out for typically two months at a clip. I logged close to 22000 miles and traveled in every corner of the continental United States from Vinal Haven Maine to Santa Cruz California and from Postville Iowa to Pensacola Florida. In all I photographed and interviewed 400 one thousand nine hundred agers who represent every social economic and religious group imaginable. The subjects range from the grandchildren of a US President to teenage gang members in New York City from prodigal teens born to talent to unwed mothers living on public assistance for Miss Teenage America to a teen preacher in West

Virginia. So how do I find these kids. Well as we all know teenagers are everywhere. I tried many approaches I found them through family and friends and friends of friends and sometimes from schools. But more often than not I met them on the streets and I had to convince them that I was not going to cause them harm that I could that they could trust me and that I was genuinely interested in hearing what they had to say. I often joke about how I earned this reputation for stalking Dean majors and stalking teenagers is not easy. I was often up against headlines that read 10 easy lessons to teach your children and about how to stay away from strangers. Thank God I'm a female. Had I been a male this project would have been impossible to do. I wanted the subjects to become involved in the creative act of making their own visual images. So I used a collaborative photographic process. My camera was an old fashioned Polaroid from the 1950s which produced a positive. The Polaroid in a negative that was immediately immersed in a bucket of chemicals I carried around with me. The

process helped build trust and offered the subject a chance to view their initial portraits. Until we got the shot in that way I hope to avoid being an outsider dropping in for a quick snapshot and interview and instead could work with my subjects and help them create an image of themselves that they could and did approve. I had one role no say cheese pictures. I was after their essence their core in search of a soulful connection. I wanted them to let go of the public mask and show me honesty. So why did I do this. Many people ask. I have a personal connection to this project due to my own two difficult teenage years. I remember all too well how hard those years can be. Back when I was a teenager I felt that I couldn't share much of what I was going through the problems we faced were all too often faced alone without connection to others going through the same thing. And I thought that in speaking to and photographing teenagers across the country I could help start a conversation about this important time of life and break down some of the

barriers that divide all of us whether teen or adult. I can't say that I had a thesis and set out to prove or disprove it. My book was and still is a journey an effort to discover and reclaim and teens are so important and interesting to discover because they are our emerging world. They are shaped profoundly by family school community and church and yet they are very much in transition and in flux seeking the influences and identities that suit them. Looking for people and ideas beyond them that can build and help build them into something else something new something better. They are still open and innocent and green. Agreeing in the best sense of the world word as an alive and growing. It was a great honor to become part of their lives if only for a moment when our paths crossed. If I had to pick a unifying theme that emerges from my project it would be in the breathtaking ethnic religious economic and cultural diversity that

defines this generation of Americans a generation twice the size of baby boomers. This diversity is both a source of strength and a source of tension. How do we unify unified diversity. How do we recognize diversity in unity. How do we all fit together when we are all so different. And what are the common experiences that help bridge the gaps between us. Whatever our age. That is what I want to explore and to help negotiate the teens I spoke to are keenly aware that they are not alone and yet they are not always sure how they connect to others or even to themselves. I spoke to a goth teen who wants to restore his virginity a privileged teen with a burning anger at the world and her place in it. A drag queen who sees themselves self as an all-American boy. All of them challenge me and I hope to see young people in new ways. It can be easy to ignore the young or to not see what's there beyond the stereotypes and masks that help them. But if you're willing to slow down and really look and listen you'll find a very rich and

complex subject. In the interviews the themes so familiar with our national politics in which the nation seems divided into warring camps of red and blue frequently express themselves especially in the clash between state and religion. War and Peace. Individual freedom and the demand for communal control. Equally telling are the common threads that emerge which at times are disturbing. I can tell you that there is no shortage of absent parents irrelevant schools drugs both legal analysts of violence and early and often unhealthy sexual experiences in our child lives today. But the message is not ultimately negative. Rather I find hope in the strength and the courage displayed by these remarkable young people as they struggled to define themselves in a fast moving and less than supportive world. And I want to emphasize that not one of the teens is as he or she first appears behind every image lies a very complex and interesting person. Much to my

surprise over the years many of these young people I documented have remained in contact with me when the book it's complicated the American teenager came out last year. I heard from many more. And as the book has gotten more attention in the media some of the teenagers many now in their 20s have been interviewed by other journalists and I've had a chance to tell their stories. It has been important to me to keep these kids involved in this project as it continues to grow. I had I always had the intention of developing this project further. And now based on the success of the book I have created a workshop modeled after the book for high school students. The goal of the workshop is to make connections through collaboration collaborating to create photographs and oral histories through the power and the impact of this collaboration. I'm hoping to help young people better and better understand each other's realities. To celebrate respect each other's differences and ultimately to learn compassion coexistence by making images of themselves and looking at images of others and by discussing their inner lives and personal

struggles teens come to recognize what they share with others. The workshop helped them gain perspective in combat the isolation that many teens feel in this way. The project that began with the book is continuing and growing as I strive to create something new beyond the pages of the book. Something that can actually help change our world rather than simply portray it. I want to show you some of the image images from the project and tell a few stories that I hope will illustrate the complex complexity of this world that I discovered and a way this project participates in that complexity. These are sisters Naomi and Marjorie Kramer from Jane's point Missouri. Their family is Amish. I had been looking for Amish teens who would who would be interested in portraits participating in this project for years and I am not kidding. But struck out miserably throughout Pennsylvania Ohio Indiana Illinois and Iowa. It proved to be a tough nut to crack since generally speaking

the Amish don't allow photographs. But after a half a dozen states and countless driveways and county fairs I finally found a Mennonite girl who put me in touch with a Kramer family who had a telephone in their outhouse. And that's more accessible despite being hundreds of miles away from me at the time. I ended up driving six hours to meet them. Naomi and Marjorie were waiting for me when I arrived. They were as interested in me as I with them. And I spent the better part of a day at their farm photographing and interviewing them. It proved to be a powerful connection for both of us for all of us so much so that these girls were keenly interested in staying in touch with me calling me regularly just to say hi and for updates as to the progress of the book. Little did anyone know that it was going to take years to finally find a publisher for this book. However in the meantime I was offered an exhibition at a university in New York and the girls decided they wanted to come for the opening and a visit. It was the first time one of them had ever left her hometown let alone flown on an airplane and neither had ever visited New York City.

They spent an entire week with me in my loft in Brooklyn New York and we oh did we have they had their photograph taken with their favorite movie star heartthrob Josh Lucas who they met in a bar. They have their ears pierced at a local tattoo parlor down the road. They shopped all over China town ate ethnic food from all over the world and visited them and visited the site of 9/11. When the time for them to go home came about I made sure they returned to Missouri with an armload of New York bagels for their family. My brother who called to chat during their visit kept joking that my photograph was going to be was going to be plastered on every post office wall up and down Missouri reading wanted for the corruption of minors. But it all ended well and I feel so thankful that their mother whom I had met when I was at their farm photographing that day had an open mind and entrusted me with her precious daughters. After their visit our phone conversations continued and once the book was published and they got

their hands on a copy Naomi mentioned to me that she was particularly drawn to the photograph. Of Britney no one's a drag queen I interviewed in Savannah Georgia. In some strange and lovely way this met Midwestern Amish girl could relate to a person she would most likely never meet in her own community and who would probably face moral condemnation from her religion. Even mother felt compassion for Brittany once Naomi explained what a drag queen was. But Britney's troubled life includes some heart wrenching details such as being gay bashed and being disowned by his father. A deacon in a Pentecostal church. However none of this stops Britney from believing in God and praying several times a day even as he competes in various drag pageants notably winning Miss Valentine Savannah crown 2001. I think this is a good example of both. This marvelous diversity that defines this generation of teenagers and the way the project can contribute to a larger process of creating greater

compassion and acceptance. I think we came to appreciate that we are our neighbor that we are not so separate from others as we sometimes think. This book provides a private individual experience of reading and looking and thinking. But it also serves as a basis for community for working together toward greater compassion acceptance and this acceptance of this great big world of ours. So here we have Roxanne love a lesbian couple from Jamaica Queens New York. I found them through the Harvey Milk School in Manhattan a high school for gay and transgender teens. I visited them at Love's mother's house their lives were marked by considerable trauma which made me weep as I heard their stories. In her interview Roxie spoke with a flatline voice of her drug addict mother from home she was taken by child services then bounced from foster home to foster home. Family moved in with her grandmother and then was raped by a family member at the age of five. She talked about her

loneliness depression and sheer desperation for love. She wanted to believe in God but was confused because she had been told that God did not accept her because she was gay love her partner had moved to the States with her family from Liberia after getting into a fight with her brother. She stabbed him. Her mother called the police and she was taken away to juvenile detention facility. She was 13 years old she. I felt a sense of community while she was upstate at the detention center. Once she was released she got into trouble again this time on purpose in order to be sent back to the center where she had finally found some sense of acceptance. As I edited their interviews I realized I didn't want to just label them as damaged because I would only confirm a negative view of them thereby solidifying that image and doing further damage. But at the same time I did not want to gloss over the hardships and indignities they had suffered. It was also important to show that they still have hope they still have their dreams and they still can turn their lives around. So I tried to offer an honest portrait demonstrating how hard

experience and real hope coexist in each of them. This is another illustration of how I see this book and the workshops I've developed. It isn't just a passive report on the state of American teens. It's part of a larger project to influence that state by creating more compassion and understanding. So here we have chivalrous his parents are addicts living on the streets and he had his own problems and spent some time in juvenile detention. But boxing helped change his life. He's a welterweight champion now and has traveled all over Europe as a boxer. He's back in school and has a pretty bright future. She has told me that this book helped empower him. I think that it helped him understand his life and see what he faced. And that knowing what you face empowers you. The book also helped him see how others live. And I think that making connections others empowers you to survive as was able to keep his dreams which may have seemed far fetched a few years ago. And all of these kids have dreams. Some of them surprising.

Top a 17 year old I met on the streets in Santa Cruz in 2002 has been homeless for over three had been homeless for over three years. I was most struck by how smart articulate was he desired contact with people. He said it made him happy. He dreamed of being an organic farmer and things you can do it. It's easy to dismiss Tapp and his dream of a normal life. But we do so at our peril. He's still too young to have to give up on and who knows what will happen over the next few years. In the end this Project shines a bright light on the similarity and the diversity that define this country and this generation. It reminds all of us that people are not necessarily who they appear to be. We were each a team once and many of us will one day have teenagers who we've become adults and our future leaders. With the election next week we are on the edge of what may be a significant political change in this country. And I think we need more than ever to remember

that we are a diverse people and that democracy democracy requires a tolerance of diversity. After all we are all one. It seems pretty clear that our children affect and reflect who we are as individuals and as a nation. Perhaps by coming to know our kids adolescents on the cusp of adulthood we can become acquainted or reacquainted with ourselves. So now I'm going to show you a short film which includes just a fragment of the photographs and pulled quotes from the book and will leave you there. A.

Thank you. Unforgettable.