Jamel Shabazz

Jamel Shabazz (b. 1960, Brooklyn, New York) is a documentary, fashion, and street photographer, best known for his iconic photographs of New York City in the 1980s. In 2010, Shabazz received a Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation award for his community service and mentorship; in 2018, he received a Gordon Parks Foundation award. In 2020, Shabazz participated in a two-person exhibition, A Choice of Weapons, Honor and Dignity, alongside Gordon Parks at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul. Shabazz’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, J. Paul Getty Museum, Gordon Parks Foundation, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Bronx Museum of the Arts. His work was featured in Aperture #223: “Vision and Justice”, Aperture #230: “Prison Nation”; numerous exhibitions at Aperture Gallery, including Prison Nation and The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion (2019–20, curated by Antwaun Sargent); and most recently in Aperture #242: “New York.” Fourteen of Shabazz’s portraits were displayed in the heart of New York City, installed on seven-foot-tall lightboxes across Rockefeller Center’s public plazas, in April 2021.