Joseph Szabo | Paris Photo 2026: Booth C10

We are honored to take part in Paris Photo's 'Bicentennial of Photography' with a solo presentation of silver gelatin prints by Joseph Szabo (American, born 1944), exhibiting both renown and unseen photographs from the 1960s-1990s, including vintage prints from the artist's archive and several large-scale works. Our presentation coincides with the launch of American Teen by Important Flowers / MACK books, a new monograph dedicated to his work and edited by Sofia Coppola.

For more than twenty-five years, Szabo taught high school art and photography, using his camera to connect with students. In doing so, he gained access to a teenage world that most adults never see. His poignant images reveal a time of rebellion, self-expression, first love and emotion that accompanies the teenage years.

The artist's photographs and photobooks have inspired a generation of fashion photographers, musicians, filmmakers and artists including Bruce Weber, Juergen Teller, Cameron Crowe and Sofia Coppola, who saw Szabo's photographs as a raw and authentic visual language for youth culture. One of his most recognizable images, Priscilla, Jones Beach (1969), crossed into pop culture when it appeared on the cover of Dinosaur Jr.'s 1991 album Green Mind. His image, The Kiss (1977), was recently named by The New York Times as one of the '25 most influential fashion photographs of the past century'.

Szabo's work is held in major international private and public collections including Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; and International Center of Photography (ICP), NY and has been exhibited at theMuseum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux, France; Colette, Paris; and the Venice Biennale, among others. The artist lives and works in Amityville, New York.

In the 1970s and 1980s, while working as an art and photography teacher in Long Island, Joseph Szabo made photographs of his students, struck by the energy of a generation discovering itself in an era of rebellion and counterculture. Szabo's black-and-white images evoke a dreamworld of adolescence as observed by a trusted outsider. Teens pose and smoke with a playful insouciance, lounge on the beach, and party at a Rolling Stones concert. Intrigued by the ambiguities of adolescent life, Szabo portrays a phase of transition shaped by self-consciousness and self-expression, and gestures to the inner depths beyond the reach of his camera. 

First published in various volumes between the 1970s and the 2000s, Szabo's pictures influenced many photographers and filmmakers. In this definitive new book, he brings together renowned and unseen work to form an unforgettable portrait of a generation and a timeless depiction of coming of age. 

With new texts by commissioning editor Sofia Coppola and Kim Gordon