Of all the signs that some young thing has major attitude, their posture is the giveaway. Anyone can hang a chain round their neck or pierce themselves, wear an Elvis belt buckle or make up their eyes just so, but stance sorts the timid from the truly tuff.
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Karlheinz Weinberger’s photographs – celebrated posthumously in an exhibition at the Swiss Institute and a publication by Rizzoli – captured a side of Swiss youth that was new for the 1950s. Through Weinberger’s lens, what these kids wanted to be and what they actually were collided spectacularly in a single slump of the shoulders or jut of the hips.
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