Joseph Szabo has spent a lifetime being one of the best kept secrets of street photography. As an art teacher at Malverne High School in Long Island during the 1970s, he began photographing his students as a way of connecting with them, first in classrooms, later at school activities, then at parties, concerts and on the local beaches. His work wasn’t published in book form until 1978, with Almost Grown, his seminal collection of images from the time.

When he drove two of his students to a Rolling Stones concert that year in Philadelphia, he turned his lens on the audience—not the attraction—focusing on the essence of teenage cool and rapture. Szabo had tapped into youth culture at its most foundational, and kept his camera aimed on the subject throughout his career. According to a 2015 article in Vogue, these images have become a standard reference to teenage style for Sofia Coppola {The Virgin Suicides] as well as fashion editors and photographers Grace Coddington and Juergen Teller, among others.

Although Szabo published a book of photographs from Jones Beach in 2010 [view gallery here], his archive of images is deep enough for a new book on the lifeguards of that sandy spit along Ocean Parkway. Coming in March from Damiani, Lifeguard celebrates the camaraderie and community of Jones Beach through the photographer’s encounters and friendships since the 1990s. Images © Joseph Szabo, courtesy of Artbook & D.A.P. CV19.BOOK.PHOTO

Joe Szabo is a teacher, photographer and author who began his photographic studies at Pratt Institute where he received an MFA degree in 1968. He taught photography at Malverne High School in Long Island from 1972-1999 and at the International Center of Photography in New York since 1978. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennial, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum among others. Szabo’s work is in the collection of many prestigious institutions including the Bibliotheque National in Paris, France, The George Eastman House Museum in Rochester, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Szabo’s photographs have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, Vogue Hommes International, New York Magazine, Newsday, New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times and many more.