Teenage
Introduction by Cameron Crowe
After his first book, Almost Grown, Joseph Szabo felt the need to continue exploring and documenting the world of teens. The result Teenage, a collection of photographs that begins with Almost Grown and adds new work never before seen from the 70s and 80s.
Photographer Joseph Szabo’s subject is adolescence; his rare gift is capturing the spirit of his students at Malverne High School, caught between puberty and the precipice of adulthood. Taken in the 70s and 80s, the photographs in Teenage represent a remarkable evocation of that period, and yet there is something timeless and endlessly compelling about Szabo’s portrait of almost-adulthood.
Some kids are painfully self-conscious, others are self-assured beyond their years. All have allowed Szabo the unique trust of seeing them as they are.
The fine line between intimacy and exploitation that other photographers approach is not in evidence here. Szabo has no agenda beyond the recording of these moments of extreme loveliness, bravo, and confusion.
With an introduction by writer/director Cameron Crowe – himself an expert chronicler of the excitement and heartbreak of youth, having directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High and more recently Almost Famous – Teenage is a poignant record of Szabo’s work spanning two decades, a timeless evocation of almost-adulthood.
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Books from Joe Szabo
Almost Grown
A time of innocence and bursting sexuality, of tenderness and raucousness. Almost Grown celebrates in photographs and poetry the joys and uncertainties of that paradoxical time when we are no longer children and yet are not quite adults.
Rolling Stones Fans
In the mid 1970’s two of my high school students approached me and asked if I would like to see a Rolling Stones Concert. They had the tickets and needed a friend with a car who would drive from Long Island to Pennsylvania.
Jones Beach
Beginning in the early 1970’s, Joseph Szabo started capturing the melting pot of humanity on Jones Beach, one of the busiest beaches in the world with more than six million visitors a year.
Lifeguard
LIFEGUARD documents the photographer’s encounters and friendships with the Jones Beach lifeguards in the photographs taken between 1990 and 2015.