From Malverne to MoMA: An interview with Joseph Szabo

Photographer Joseph Szabo stood next to a copy of his iconic work, “Priscilla” during a Herald visit to his studio last week.

Rossana Weitekamp

Szabo’s photo, “Marianne and Tom,” is part of a permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The photo is of Malverne residents Marianne and Tom Malone as teenagers at Malverne High School. A copy is currently up for auction through the International Center of Photography.

Joseph Szabo

Szabo’s “Hurt” is owned by screenwriter and director Sophia Coppola.

Joseph Szabo

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“It’s just amazing how all this stuff happened, when nothing was ever planned,” said Joseph Szabo, who taught a photography class during most of his 27 years at Malverne High School. “My whole goal was to do a good job teaching, keep the kids interested and have a little fun.”

In 1972, Szabo was hired as an art teacher, and eventually he started a photography class and club, and became a photo adviser to the yearbook and school newspaper. “It gave me an unofficial license to photograph any student, any place, at any time,” he said.

Thanks to the courses he took at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan, he learned how to use photography as an art form and as self-expression. “I then brought all of that knowledge back to the classroom,” said Szabo, who began taking pictures of his students. He would photograph them, documentary style, in the hallways, while they took tests and outside, while they joked with their friends.

In an age before parental consent was a consideration, he established such trust with his students that they invited him to concerts, to the beach, to their house parties — and quietly encouraged him to take pictures. “By photographing my students, it was a way to indicate to them that I thought they were OK,” he said.

Szabo took thousands of pictures of his students over the years, and when he retired in 1999, he thought his work was done. But it was only beginning.

He went through his archives with several people outside the high school who had shown an interest, one connection led to another, and before long his career as an artist began to blossom. Szabo, 71, is now a world-renowned photographer whose works are part of permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and art galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has sold photos to celebrities including Sophia Coppola, Ben Stiller and Jack Black. And much of his success, he says, can be attributed to his Malverne students, who gave him inspiration to practice his art while he taught there.