Nowadays, a secondhand, first-edition copy can sell for hundreds of dollars; in August, the book will be reissued by D.A.P. as “Adrienne Salinger: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms” in an expanded, handsome hardback form, with a price tag to match. The new edition confirms the collection’s status not merely as a beautifully constructed document of its time (a counterpart of sorts to Nan Goldin’s images of young denizens of downtown New York in the late seventies and early eighties) but as an enduring work that speaks to our own moment in new and suggestive ways. Teen-agers today are the most photographed generation ever, having been snapped incessantly by their parents before graduating to selfies and Instagram in their own right. Compared with the self-curated, only partially self-disclosing pictures that are the mainstay of social media, however, Salinger’s images—many accompanied by a short text drawn from extended video interviews she conducted—have a disquieting intimacy, offering a sense of the perennial perilousness of adolescence. Danielle D., seventeen, shot in Syracuse, New York, in 1990, is pictured seated in a white wicker chair like a throne, a pair of pink ballet pointe shoes draped over a pushpin board above her bed. Dressed in a stripy T-shirt, khaki shorts, and tube socks, with fair, cascading curls and a winsome smile, she looks like a paragon of the high-school popular girl. The text on the opposite page reveals that, after a manic episode, Danielle spent thirty days in a mental hospital and was diagnosed as bipolar. In the photograph, she is on lithium.

Salinger’s subjects are drawn from various walks of life, but their generational commonalities seem more significant than their socioeconomic differences. She notes that, whatever an individual’s background, the rooms were always more or less the same size. “They are all about twelve by twelve,” Salinger says now. “And all of their world is in that space—their past, present, and future.” There is Amie D., seventeen, from Fayetteville, New York, who has a Nantucket poster on her wall and says her favorite fashion designer and career role model is Donna Karan. A few pages away is Auto C., eighteen, from Liverpool, New York, who has a tattoo of a question mark on his chest and a Betsy Ross flag graffitied with an anarchist symbol on his wall. He tells Salinger that his father hit him with a hatchet when he was nine or ten years old. His father, he says, “is smart, but not well educated. He didn’t rise above it.”