Joseph Szabo

Joseph Szabo Biography

For more than 25 years, Joseph Szabo taught high school art and photography, using his camera to create connections with his students. In doing so, Szabo gained access to a teenage world that most adults never see. Joseph Szabo's poignant images from the late 1960s to 1980s reveal a time of rebellion, self-expression, first love, and the emotion that accompanies the teenage years. Szabo's practice began as a young teacher looking for a way to break down the barrier between himself and his students-a project that started in the classroom and gradually expanded to school grounds, the stadium, the parking lot, and parties. Rather than directing his young subjects into formal poses, Szabo sought spontaneous moments that revealed their personalities and the complicated emotions of adolescence. Szabo has stated, "for a teacher to really know their subject, it's not enough to get a master's degree. What really counts are your personal relationships. I was paying attention to them as individuals, not just as students sitting behind a desk. I realized it was important to be inclusive of everybody, not just the smart, gifted and good-looking kids." Over the years, Joseph Szabo's photographs have become revered by a younger generation of fashion photographers, editors, and collectors for his ability to capture the unpretentious affect of his subjects and the cool style that defined that era.

Joseph Szabo was born in 1944 in Toledo, Ohio. He taught at Malverne High School, Long Island, NY, from 1972 to 1999, and subsequently for more than two decades at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Szabo holds a BFA from Bowling Green State University and an MFA from Pratt Institute. He lives and works in Amityville, New York.

Joseph Szabo's portraits of teenagers became the foundation for his first publication, Almost Grown (1978), which combined photographs with student poetry to explore the uncertainty, sexuality, humor, and energy of adolescence. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the book had circulated among a generation of fashion photographers and filmmakers, including Juergen Teller, Sofia Coppola, and Cameron Crowe, who saw Szabo's photographs as a raw and authentic visual language for youth culture. One of Joseph Szabo's most recognizable photographs, Priscilla (1969), crossed into pop culture when it appeared on the cover of Dinosaur Jr.'s 1991 album Green Mind. Szabo expanded the project with his next publication, Teenage (2003). Jones Beach State Park was also a recurring subject for more than three decades, resulting in the 2010 monograph Jones Beach; through Szabo's lens, the beach became a kind of social theater, capturing candid moments among couples, children, teenagers, and lifeguards. In November 2026, Jackson Fine Art will present a solo exhibition of Joseph Szabo's photography at Paris Photo, in conjunction with the upcoming release American Teen, edited by filmmaker Sofia Coppola and published by MACK, featuring both well-known and previously unpublished photographs from Szabo's career. Szabo has also received several notable awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship.

Joseph Szabo's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the International Center of Photography, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux, France; Colette, Paris; and the Venice Biennale. Szabo's photographs are held in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Jackson Fine Art has exhibited two solo shows of Joseph Szabo's work: Jones Beach in 2011 and Almost Grown in 2017.