Mr. Szabo comes to Tokyo or the Globalization of T-Shirts

Last weekend, I was shopping (well, browsing) in an all-too-trendy shop in Tokyo's all-too-trendy Harajuku/Shibuya district. JPN universites and high schools were still on break and I was the only adult in the room.

I don’t normally pay attention to T-shirts; but, a B&W photo on an off white (green-tinted) shirt caught my eye. Even from a distance, I recognized the style of Joe Szabo. It helped that there was a large sign with his name on it.

As friends, relatives and regular readers of the blog know well, Uncle Swint is from Long Island. Joe Szabo takes pictures on Long Island. He takes pictures of high school students. In fact, he was a photography teacher at Malverne High School. You guessed it. Uncle Swint went to MHS and Mr. Szabo was my teacher.

Needless to say, I couldn’t resist forking over $50 a T-shirt of Priscilla, a girl I had known since elementary school.

Coincidentally, I am now reading (and recommend) Pietra Rivoli’s The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, which dissects and traces the production of globally-sourced T-shirts from cotton fields in Lubbock, Texas to mills in Dalian, China to souvenir shops in Euro-Disney. I can now add to this the story of a picture taken of my friend on Long Island in the mid-70s being printed (in Haiti, by the way) and making its way to an over priced shop in Uncle Swint’s new neighborhood in Tokyo.

Bravo, Joe.

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Joe Szabo’s 1978 book on adolescence, Almost Grown, was acclaimed by the American Library Association and placed on its "Best Books of the Year" listing. 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.