|
The times of our lives
Here is a body of work that couldn’t get itself arrested when published as the slim volume Almost Grown in 1978. Forlorn but not forgotten, the work was rediscovered some 10 years later by a generation of fashion and style photographers - and at least one film director (Sofia Coppola) - that was inspired by the way it epitomised what it is to be young, on the cusp of adulthood, self-confident and self-conscious by turns; the parts in your life played by friends, fashion and fags (cigarettes, that is). So rejuvenated, as it were, the work now resurfaces in expanded form as Teenage, and includes later images from the ‘80s and 90’s.The author Joseph Szabo taught photography at Malverne High School (until 1999) in Long Island, New York, and his students were his his subjects. His black and white photographs document that period of ‘almost adulthood’ which may be remembered as the happiest days of one’s life, or the most miserable, or more likely a mixture of both. His recording of the students was part of Szabo’s role as a yearbook supervisor, and this has helped him document without obvious intrusion. There are plenty of very self-conscious youngsters here, but it’s not the camera that’s troubling them - they are more aware of each other. The girls more concerned that their hair is just so, the boys showing off, and both take care that the angle of the cigarette is just right.
Teenage, Joseph Szabo, published by Greybull Press, $45, ISBN 0 9727788 0 2.
|
|
|
