How teenagers have changed over the past 50 years

Have you ever wondered how teenagers have changed over the past five decades? How have the clothes they wear changed? What have become the cars on which they dissect the city? What are the companies they hang out in like? The Joseph Billows Gallery in San Diego is currently hosting an exhibition featuring old and modern photographs that tell about the physical, social and emotional aspects of youth and the accompanying identity formation.

These photographs, taken in the period from the 1960s to the present day, represent a collective portrait of youth together with its characteristic clumsiness, naivety, rage, enthusiasm, beauty and anxiety.

Two girls with big wheels. Photo: Kristin Osinski, 1983.

Photo: Mark Steinmetz, Georgia, 1997.

Photo: Sage Sawyer, South Boston, 1982.

Photo: Bill Yates, 1972.

Photo: Enrico Natali. Graduation, Detroit, 1968.

David is in his room. Photo: Linda Brooks, 1981.

California, 1993. Photo: Duncan Mccossker.

1972. Photo: Bill Yates.

Chicago, 1965. Photo: Edward Sturr.

July 1980. Photo: Joan Albert Martin.

1959. Photo: Joseph Sterling.

1997, the border of the states of Georgia and North Carolina. Photo: Mark Steinmetz.

Hawaii, 1983. Photo: Duncan McCosker.

Italy, 2010. Photo: Andrea Modica.

2010. Photo: Michael Mulno.

Juliet, 1979. Photo: John Myers.

California, 1973. Photo: Jean Brown Berkeley.

19-year-old Rodney, 1968. Photo: Elaine Mayes.

1967. Photo: Roger Vail.

Modena, Italy, 2010. Photo: Andrea Modica.