These timeless photos prove that youth never changes
- Text by Mark Steinmetz
- Photography by Mark Steinmetz
My parents gave me my first camera around the age of six.
Although I have many clear memories of framing scenes, and even set up my own darkroom at 12, I saw myself going into the sciences.
But early on in college, I took a course on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni before leaving science behind.
I left for Yale School of Art, thinking I’d go into film, but that route began to seem impractical and I was impatient.
That’s when I realised that with photography, you don’t need to have a crew or command a lot of money. It’s more like being a poet, where you just have your piece of paper.
In 1983, when I was 22, I decided to drop out after a semester and head for Los Angeles to find the photographer Garry Winogrand who, I believe, had a history of hanging out with other photographers.
It seems awfully bold, looking back, but I really don’t have an explanation other than it felt natural.
He had a Leica, I had a Leica; he needed someone to drive around so he could take pictures out the window, and I guess I said things that made him think I was okay.
It turned out to be the last year of his life and I absorbed a great deal from him, like going out in the world and making yourself available to what it offers – not feeling that you’re too busy or that time is money.
When it came to shaping my own body of work, I wanted pictures that could tell a story together.
That way, the meaning would be cumulative and you wouldn’t need so much weight on a single image.
Two projects I focused on were little league baseball and summer camps. Every year, from spring into summer, one would lead into another and certain things never changed.
In baseball, you’ve got uniforms, chain-link fences and dug-outs. At summer camp, you have sleeping bags, cabins and camp res. There isn’t much difference between them in 1990 or 1965.
I like that time of age, too. There’s a kind of grave maturity developing at around 11 years old.
When a little kid laughs or cries, it doesn’t have real resonance, whereas if someone has these emotions between eight and 12, there’s a poignancy to it.
When they become adults, it’s just not the same. Many of these photos are about the predicament of being a kid put into a certain situation.
In one picture, these girls who have been so horrible to each other all summer are now parting – and the depth of their love just gushes out. It’s almost excruciating.
I think there’s a lot of growing and learning in photography. To make good pictures is a sort of demonstration of how you are as a person and as a photographer.
That process reinforces your growth and your growth reinforces your photography, so you’re always deciding who you are through your photos.
It’s this constant looking at self, navigating your feelings.
The larger patterns only come out after the fact. I’ve taken a lot of pictures where I felt kind of depressed because I can’t imagine what they’re good for.
But when I started making books, I found that one page is a wonderful service to the one that came before. Everything starts to fit together nicely; the meanings grow and change.
Those initial projects – The Players, Summer Camp and Kids & Teens – took many years and that approach has transferred to all the work I’ve been doing ever since.
I don’t really believe in short-term projects and I’ve always had a distaste for the topical.
I hope to be relevant and contemporary but at the same time I don’t want anything to be too ‘now’ as, in a few years, it just won’t have the urgency.
I prefer focusing on everyday things because they tend to stand the test of time.
I think I’m unusual in that my process feels like playing chess over a long time frame.
At various stages, you’ll think there’s a dead end only to find a new opening and discover more possibilities.
It’s sort of like The Old Man and the Sea: sometimes you just have to persevere.
This article appears in Huck 57 – The Documentary Photo Special IV. Subscribe today so you never miss another issue.
Check out the portfolio of photographer Mark Steinmetz.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like
A stark, confronting window into the global cocaine trade
Sangre Blanca — Mads Nissen’s new book is a close-up look at various stages of the drug’s journey, from production to consumption, and the violence that follows wherever it goes.
Written by: Isaac Muk
“Like skating an amphitheatre”: 50 years of the South Bank skatepark, in photos
Skate 50 — A new exhibition celebrates half a century of British skateboarding’s spiritual centre. Noah Petersons traces the Undercroft’s history and enduring presence as one of the world’s most iconic spots.
Written by: Noah Petersons
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
Free-spirited, otherworldly portraits of Mexico City’s queer youth
Birds — Pieter Henket’s new collaborative photobook creates a stage for CDMX’s LGBTQ+ community to express themselves without limitations, styling themselves with wild outfits that subvert gender and tradition.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The suave style and subtle codes of gay San Francisco in the ’70s
Seminal Works — Hal Fischer’s new photobook explores the photographer’s archive, in which he documented the street fashion and culture of the city post-Gay Liberation, and pre-AIDS pandemic.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The stripped, DIY experimentalism of SHOOT zine
Zine Scene — Conceived by photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the ’00s, the publication’s photos injected vulnerability into gay portraiture, and provided a window into the characters of the Brooklyn arts scene. A new photobook collates work made across its seven issues.
Written by: Miss Rosen
