Age of American innocents

Szabo captured the eternal obsessions of youth using some of his own photography students in Boys Smoking (1974)
The Weekender

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If a teacher followed his students into their bedrooms today alarm bells would ring, but Joseph Szabo's portraits of his photography students at a Long Island high school (1966-77) belong to a less paranoid time.

The trust of his teenage students is obvious in their unselfconsciousness, but there is also a healthy self-awareness, an occasional sexual knowingness and almost audible infectious laughter. Szabo captures the moods in between the fun of adolescence, that complicated time-ghetto en route to adulthood.

This exhibition of 35 photographs shows a sociologist at work in the school, on the street, at the beach, and in scenes of bedroom preening à la Saturday Night Fever. The timeless obsessions of youth are all there - smoking, snogging, exams, cars and just hanging out. Interestingly, viewed from our new drugs era, there is neither booze nor spliffs in evidence.

Comparisons between these images and those of film-maker Larry Clark are inevitable. But while Clark's photographs and films such as Kids reveal an attraction to edgy sexual and drug subcultures, Szabo searched for the innocence behind the disguises.

His posturing, longhaired Latino tough-boy is sweetly unconvincing. The iconic Priscilla, standing alone with a cigarette on a crowded beach and with a modern, sullen-cool attitude towards the camera, conceals the teenage moment going on inside.

These students pre-date America's obsession with physical perfection: teeth are without braces, faces make-up-free, clothes cheap, not trendy. Three wonderful geeks reminiscent of Mad magazine pose with cigarettes and knowing irony. Today's boy-men would snarl threateningly; the girls would stand deadpan as fashion models. But I bet Szabo would still find the innocence.

Until 16 April. Information: 020 7352 3649.

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