Tanisha C. Ford in conversation with Jamel Shabazz

Aperture and Rockefeller Center are pleased to host a discussion between esteemed photographer Jamel Shabazz and writer Tanisha C. Ford. Since the early 1980s, Shabazz has photographed New York’s street life and hip-hop culture with joy, verve, and style. His work not only captures the essence and pureness of hip-hop culture in New York, but also the deep connections he has with his subjects and community. For this event, Shabazz and Ford will discuss Shabazz’s career, his lasting legacy, how quarantine has given him time to rediscover hidden gems in his archive, and the installation of work at Rockefeller Center through April.

One year after New York City shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Aperture magazine released “New York,” an extraordinary issue honoring the city through photographs and essays by visionary artists and writers, reminding us of how much there is to discover, and relish, when New York comes roaring back. Coinciding with “New York” is a monthlong celebration of NYC at Rockefeller Center featuring a public photography exhibition, virtual talk series, pop-up store and gallery.

Jamel Shabazz (born in Brooklyn, 1960) is best known for his iconic photographs of New York City during the 1980s. A documentary, fashion, and street photographer, he has published ten monographs of his work and contributed to over three dozen other photography books. His photographs have been exhibited worldwide, and his work is housed in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Fashion Institute of Technology, New York; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Gordon Parks Foundation, Pleasantville, New York; and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Over the years, Shabazz has instructed young students as part of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Expanding the Walls project, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Teen Curators Program, New York; as well as at the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, Philadelphia. He is recipient of a 2018 Gordon Parks Foundation Award for his commitment to documentary photography. Shabazz is a member of the photo collective Kamoinge. As an artist, his goal is to contribute to the preservation of world history and culture. Photo by Michael A McCoy

Tanisha C. Ford is a writer, cultural critic, and professor of history at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York. She is author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul (2015) and Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion (2019), and coauthor (with Deborah Willis) of Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful (Aperture, 2019). Ford is cofounder of TEXTURES, a pop-up material culture lab creating and curating content on Black design, material life, and the built environment.

Programming for Aperture’s “New York” issue is made possible by and in collaboration with Rockefeller Center.

Image: Jamel Shabazz, Rude Boy, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, 1982. Courtesy the artist