The influential New York photographer Jamel Shabazz has created portraits of the city's
communities for over 40 years. Born and raised in Brooklyn Shabazz began photographing people
he encountered on New York streets in the late 1970s creating an archive of cultural shifts
and struggles across the city. His portraits underscore the street as a space for
self-presentation whether through fashion or pose. In every instance Shabazz aims in his
words to represent individuals and communities with honor and dignity. This book-awarded the
Gordon Parks Foundation Steidl Book Prize-presents for the first time Shabazz's work from
the 1970s to '90s as it exists in his archive: small prints thematically grouped and sequenced
in traditional family photo albums that function as portable portfolios. Shabazz began making
portraits in the mid-1970s in Brooklyn Queens the West Village and Harlem. His camera was
also at his side while working as an officer at Rikers Island in the 1980s where he took
portraits of inmates that he later shared with their friends and families. Shabazz had his
rolls of color film processed at a one-hour photo shop that provided two copies of each print:
he typically gave one to his sitters and the second he organized into changing albums to be
shown to future subjects. This book features selections from over a dozen albums many
never-before-seen and includes his earliest photographs as well as images taken inside Rikers
Island all accompanied by essays that situate Shabazz's work within the broader history of
photography.
