After being asked by two of his students to attend a Rolling Stones gig in 1978, photographer Joseph Szabo finally found his true calling. Overwhelmed by the energy around him, the heaving crowd, the sheer emotion in people’s faces, and the wet and soggy stadium, Joseph pulled out his camera are started recording what he saw.
Having previously captured the lives of his high school students, from this moment onwards, he decided to capture their lives beyond the school walls. “I’ve always felt that music is a mysterious thing,” he explains, “in the way the sounds are put together, in what it can express. When you add the right words, it’s inspirational, it’s infectious. There is no doubt that The Stones’ music influenced my work that day. But Mick Jagger and company were not the reason why I was there. The show was on the field, among the people. You see these faces and you connect with them, you feel a certain sympathy or empathy for them.”
To celebrate where it all began, the Michael Hoppen Gallery will be curating an online exhibition of a selection of shots taken by Joseph on that day. “This is what teenagers were like on this day,” he adds, “in this place, in this time. Substitute today’s clothes and hairstyles, and I think you’ll find teenagers doing pretty much the same things.”
Credits
All images © Joseph Szabo, Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery