Photog Jamel Shabazz discusses new exhibit at Bronx Documentary Center

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Jamel Shabazz can be seen as a quintessential Brooklyn, or rather New York, photographer. Over his 50-year career, his work has spanned street photography, documentary work, and fashion photography. His photo albums, collecting all of his work, are iconic in their own right and they all bear his unmistakable style and eye.

The exhibition “Seconds of My Life: Photographs from 1975–2025,” on view at the Bronx Documentary Center and curated by Michael Kamber and Cynthis Rivera, is a retrospective of Shabazz’s work and highlights his talent for capturing powerful stories of identity, resilience, and community from the streets of New York and beyond.

Born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in 1960, Shabazz grew up surrounded with a sense of family in his community, where neighbors looked out for each other and the children all played together. His childhood also gave him his first introduction to art and photography: His father was a professional photographer, who learned the craft while in the United States Navy in the 1950s.

Jamel Shabazz Photographs

“Upon getting out of the service, he worked as a freelance photographer, converting our small apartment into a studio with backdrops and professional lights,” Shabazz said via email. “Family members and neighbors would often come by in their best gear and he would charge a small fee to photograph them. Seeing how my father conducted business inspired me.”

It was his family’s photo albums, though, that hold a special place in both his heart and his mind.

“Family photo albums were meticulously organized and placed on our coffee table. All of the subjects were relatives, and my father took great pride in taking care of them, passionately updating the albums with new images as they were made,” Shabazz recalled. “Many of the photographs, which were a combination of black-and-white and color images, were dated, and went back as early as the 1900s. As a child, I took great delight in looking at those albums and learning more about my history and lineage.”

When he was 15, in junior high school, Shabazz borrowed his mother’s old Kodak Instamatic camera, which wasn’t being used, and began photographing his friends, who were getting into graffiti at the time. While Shabazz did try his hand at it, there was something about photography that resonated with him more than the graffiti art.

“Perhaps it was the fact that it was already deep in my DNA,” he said. “I started photographing friends and once the roll was finished, I would take it to the local pharmacy, where the roll would be developed. Once I saw the results, I was hooked. This newfound love gave me a sense of purpose, and created a path that allowed me to interact with even more people.”

Seeing the work of photographers Gordon Parks and James Van Der Zee further influenced his own photography. Shabazz was intrigued by how Parks worked on everything from fashion to documentary, to fine art, to portraiture. Seeing Parks’s work helped guide him to becoming a better and more well-rounded photographer.

“What inspired me about the work of Van Der Zee was how he documented the pride and dignity of the Black community in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance,” Shabazz added. “Those images served as a counter-narrative for the negative images I was seeing on a regular. One of the things I liked most about Van Der Zee was how he used various props in his photos, and how he posed his subjects, making everyone look regal and dignified. I took note of how he operated and incorporated some of those elements into my creative process.”

Since those early days in his career, now five decades ago, a lot has changed in New York City, some of it good and some of it not, and Shabazz has captured all of it in his work. In his view, however, one period from his long career stands out.

“One of the most impactful times is the era I like to refer to as ‘A Time Before Crack.’ It is within that particular body of work that you see countless photographs of ordinary people smiling and seemingly at peace,” Shabazz said. “It was not that it was a perfect time period, for we surely had problems, but once AIDS, crack epidemics, and war on drugs made landfall, life as we once knew it was forever changed.”

With such a long career to sum up, selecting photographs for his retrospective was a challenge — the amount of work Shabazz has created over the decades is immense. He wanted the work on view to provoke thought, have backstories, and honor those who had passed away over the years.

“I selected images that were diverse and reflective of various cultures and communities, as all too often, my work is pigeonholed in one area. Themes have always been a part of my creative process, but with the curation of this show, I wanted a nice mix of images representing the different aspects of my style, so in the show, there are images of children, friends, urban fashion, everyday people, and — of course — images from the many decades that I have been shooting.”

Shabazz wanted to give viewers the chance to experience his world and witness some of the observations he has made over time. His hope was that people will see and learn about how photography gave his life meaning and purpose.

In the end, Shabazz returns to the family albums that he grew up looking through. The tradition of making and passing down family photo albums from generation to generation is slowly eroding, he said, and a connection to family, history, and memory are slowly eroding as well.

“In today’s world, we have so many photos on our individual telephones and social media feeds; however, it’s nothing like having an important part of your family history in the form of the photo album,” he said. “This matter can be bittersweet for those who may not have family, or have conflict within the family, but it is never too late to start developing an album. It is equally important to photograph and interview family members to maintain that history for future generations, and the survival of the family in general.”

Jamel Shabazz’s “Seconds of My Life: Photographs from 1975–2025” will be on view at the Bronx Documentary Center from Feb. 28 through Apr. 20, 2025. More information is at bronxdoc.org.