Seen and Heard: Teenagers Talk About Their Lives - Hardcover

Kalergis, Mary Motely

4.2

25 ratings by Goodreads

9781556708343: Seen and Heard: Teenagers Talk About Their Lives

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556708343 ISBN 13: 9781556708343

Publisher: Stewart Tabori & Chang, 1998

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Seen and Heard is an uncensored look into the very private world of the American teenager. It shatters the prevailing stereotype of uncommunicative kids with a face -to-face look at 50 teens who explain what their lives are like in a series of interviews. '

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Review:

Part of what is hard about being a teenager is that it seems like you're alone with your feelings and that no one else has ever worried about, hoped for, or dreaded the same things in the same, painful way. Struggling teens (and parents who can't get their kids to talk to them) will take comfort in these first-person stories from young people. Mary Motley Kalergis (Mother: A Collective Portrait and With This Ring: A Portrait of Marriage) photographed and interviewed 51 young Americans representing a wide spectrum of interests and experiences for this enlightening book. They include a farmer's son and a recent immigrant from Mexico, kids from small towns and the daughter of famous parents. There are poets, baton twirlers, football stars, and skateboarders. Yet, presented by Kalgeris' sympathetic lens and pen, these seemingly dissimilar subjects reveal that there is, perhaps, a universal mood to the years between childhood and maturity: heartbreaking earnestness. Given the opportunity, even the most rebellious of the book's subjects admits he lies awake worrying at night, because he is "getting a little bit scared" about the future. "I want to be as fearlessly honest as I can while I'm alive," another of the interviewees declares.

This book would make a terrific tool for opening communication between adults and young people. As playwright and actor Sam Shepard says in his foreword: "This generation of kids may simply be more honest and courageous than the one I belonged to during my adolescence." Surely this is reason enough to find out what they're thinking. --Maria Dolan

About the Author:

MARY MOTLEY KALERGIS is an author, photographer and interviewer, whose work chronicles the bonds that connect individuals, families, and communities.

Her published books include Love In Black & White (Kensington Publishing), Charlottesville Portrait (Howell Press), Seen and Heard: Teenagers Talk About Their Lives (Stewart Tabori, & Chang), With This Ring: A Portrait of Marriage (The Chrysler Museum of Art), Home of the Brave (E.P. Dutton), Mother: A Collective Portrait (E.P. Dutton), and Giving Birth (Harper & Row.)

Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; The Burden Gallery and the International Center of Photography in NYC; The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia; the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida; The San Antonio Museum of Art;, The Field Museum of Chicago; the Museum Fur Photographie in Stuttgart, Germany and the Diaframa Kodak Galleria in Milan, Italy.

Photographs by Mary have also appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times, People, Time, Newsweek, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Seventeen Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Marie Claire (France), The Guardian (London), and Camera Manuchi (Japan).

Mary was formerly on the faculty of The International Center of Photography in New York and has served as "special stills" photographer on movie sets including Long Walk Home and Cousin Bette.

She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is currently finishing her eighth book, Considering Adoption, to be published by Atelerix Press in 2013, and collaborating on a retrospective of her work which will be released in print and on-line in 2014.

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