Hailing from Red Hook, Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz was just nine years old when he first read Leonard Freed’s 1968 book Black in White America. The book, which documented the challenges African Americans faced in the struggle for civil rights, impressed upon Shabazz the power of photography to transform the way we see and think about the world and our place in it.
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As the son of a U.S. Navy photographer, Shabazz recognized the camera was a tool that could be used to both document and safeguard life. He began making photographs in high school, after which he joined the army. When Shabazz returned home in 1980, he began to see the impact of gun violence across the community, and in just a few years the ravages of crack and AIDS. Photography quickly became a calling that Shabazz pursued without recognition or remuneration for years.
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Instead, Shabazz followed his instinct, understanding that photography was more than a medium or commodity: it was a means to connect with a new generation of Black and Brown teens coming of age in a nation that had systematically targeting them for destruction for centuries. When he wasn’t working as a Corrections Officer for the New York Police Department, Shabazz would hit the streets in search of people whose spirit touched his soul, seeing something in them that he sought to preserve through his work.
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