Jones Beach - Tapa dura

Beginning in the early 1970s, against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean, Joseph Szabo started capturing the melting pot of humanity on Jones Beach, one of the America's busiest beaches with more than six million visitors a year. Among the sea of bodies on Jones Beach, Szabo's camera isolates both rare moments of introspection and unashamed exuberance. Images of tanned muscle men, a catwalk display of beach wear, heavily oiled skin, masses of sprayed hair, and shy adolescents reluctantly in swimwear all reveal the dynamics of the beach. These photographs show the city and all its different tribes of people displaced to the coast for the day. Divisions and class and race boundaries are temporarily forgotten along with inhibitions about body size and shape. With no agenda, the near perfect and the flawed are all documented with the same respect and tenderness in these vital photographs taken over the last 35 years.

Joseph Szabo taught photography at a Long Island, NY high school from 1972 to 1999, as well as at the International Center of Photography in New York for more than twenty years. His work resides in many permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ICP, the Bibliotheque National in Paris, and Yale University.