Jamel Shabazz is an African-American photographer known for his work in documenting urban life in New York City. Through analog film and digital photography, his work showcases the cultural vibrancy of the city’s black and brown communities, dismantling negative stereotypes of communities that are often painted as dangerous or decaying. “As a socially conscious photographer, I strive to create images that show reality, provoke thought, and at the same time contribute to a visual record of time and history,” he has said about his work. Shabazz was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York. Influenced by his father, who was a photographer in the Navy in the 1950s, he developed an interest in photography from a young age. At the age of 15, he started taking pictures, and then became more interested in photography when, after joining the military, he was stationed for three years in Germany. Upon his return, he used photography as a way to document the transformation of the community he had left as well as the relationships he was rebuilding with his peers. Over time, inspired by photographers like Leonard Freed, James Van Der Zee, and Gordon Parks, in the 1980s he started photographing other aspects of life in New York City, including street fashion, LGBTQ pride, emerging hip-hop culture, and social issues as a way to preserve history and culture. Shabazz has written multiple monographs and contributed to numerous photography books, with some of his photographs appearing in other forms of media such as the 2007 documentary Planet B-Boy and the cover of the 2011 hip-hop album Undun by The Roots. In 2018, he was an honoree at the Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner and Auction, where he received the Gordon Parks Foundation Award. His work has been widely exhibited, including solo exhibitions in Argentina, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Japan, and England, and even more group showings. Currently, some of his work is in permanent collections including the Whitney Museum in New York, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Throughout his career, Shabazz has worked with many youth organizations, including the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, the Bronx Museum’s Teen Council youth program, and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Expanding the Walls Project, to teach people about photography and social responsibility. In addition, he has lectured at the Fashion Institute of Technology, The International Center for Photography, The Brooklyn Historic Foundation, Haverford College, and Parsons New School of Design. Shabazz continues to live and work in Brooklyn, New York.