The Teen Portraits That Captivated Sofia Coppola

Joseph Szabo’s photographs, collected in the book American Teen, document teenagers at Malverne High School and nearby haunts in the 1970s and ’80s with crisp black-and-white frames and an emphasis on unposed, immediate presence. Szabo, who taught darkroom photography and carried a camera around campus, captured groups and couples in hallways, at the beach, and in cars - close enough to convey the smell of one another’s shampoo - and recorded stylistic details like feathered hair, high-waisted jeans, ringer tees, and cigarettes. The pictures emphasize loose-limbed ease and a kind of uncurated selfhood, often intimate without intrusive staging; repeated images of kids blowing bubbles, reclining with friends, or kissing show comfort within peer groups rather than performance for an audience.

Sofia Coppola’s Important Flowers imprint published the book after she found Szabo’s work influential and hard to find; she first noticed one of his images on a Dinosaur Jr. album cover. The central argument is that these photos register what adolescence felt like before social media and algorithmic self-definition - an era of sloppy androgyny, available time, and low-key belonging. The collection invites nostalgia and suggests that Szabo’s portraits offer a corrective to contemporary, curated adolescent visibility by celebrating presence, attention to small gestures, and the absence of constant self-monitoring.