
Jamel Shabazz
Together with Bill Cunningham, Jamel Shabazz has been a forerunner to modern street style photography. But where Cunningham often portrayed wealthy fashionistas at Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Shabazz has pointed his camera at young, black kids in some of Brooklyn and the Bronx’s roughest neighbourhoods. The main theme is a youth proud of its culture.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Shabazz has visually represented urban New York for the last 40 years and has been the most influential photographic chronicler of the city’s hip hop culture. In the 1980s and 1990s, Shabazz’s images were relatively unknown outside the core hip-hop community. It wasn’t until 1998 when he took his portfolio to The Source, a leading hip hop magazine, which in its high-profile hundredth issue published twelve pages of Shabazz’s portraits of urban street life, that his images met a broader audience. The portfolio soon led to a contract for Shabazz's first book, Back in the Days, published in 2001.
Before Shabazz could make a living out of his photography, he worked for 20 years as a corrections officer, part of the time at the infamous Rikers Island prison and mental institution. Since his debut, Shabazz has published six more books, received the prestigious The Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Books prize, and has been represented at exhibitions around the world.


Can I help you, Downtown, Brooklyn, NYC 1981

Cruising, East Flatbush, NYC 1981

Dee, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1982

Fly Girls, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, 1982

Fly Guy, Downtown, Brooklyn, NYC 1983

Friends, Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, NYC 1981

Help Me, Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYC 1980

Joy riding Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1981

Rolling Partners, On The Lower, Eastside of NYC, 1982

Rolling Solo, Lower Eastside, NYC 1982

Saturday Night Live, Times Square, NYC early 1980s

School Days, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1982

Sons, Red Hook Houses, Brooklyn, 1981

Standing firm, The Lower Eastside, NYC 1982

Straight out of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, 1982

Telephone Time, Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1982

The Adidas Crew, on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan 1982

The Flatbush Crew, Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1983

The Observer, NYC 1985

Time of Innocence, Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1983
