Almost Grown

Almost Grown, Harmony Books 1978, is a celebration of teen-age experience: the years of restless desire and blossoming sexuality; the world of high school, parking lots, and street corners; and the uniquely American culture in which all of us have grown up. It is a record of photographs and poetry that combines the talents of an adult photographer and a group of almost-adult poets who were asked to tell a picture’s story as their own. The result is an unusual collaboration between teacher and teenager, a funny and romantic look at teenagers looking at themselves.

Theirs is a world rarely witnessed by parents. Here is what kids do together – at the beach of the drive-in, during and after school – what they themselves describe as “doing nothing” because it is neither work nor play.

In Szabo’s ninety photographs and twenty-five poems written by teenagers in Alan Ziegler’s writing workshops, Almost Grown dramatizes and clarifies adolescence, making it familiar, sensual, and charged with the shock of recognition.

Because my photographic book on adolescence, Almost Grown, is now out of print and a collector’s item, I am using the WWW to “re-publish” some of those photographs for the collector of fine photography.

For prints, contact my galleries.

 

Books from Joe Szabo

Almost Grown book cover

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.

Joseph Szabo Teenage book cover

Teenage

A collection of photographs that begins with Almost Grown and adds new work never before seen from the 70s and 80s.

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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.