It is now almost two years since the American photographer Jamel Shabazz was awarded the Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize in 2022. The prize culminates in a Steidl publication and Albums was published in the same year. This book presents, for the first time, Shabazz’s work from the 1970s to ’90s as it exists in his archive: small prints thematically grouped and sequenced in traditional family photo albums that function as portable portfolios.

Jamel Shabazz began making portraits in the mid-1970s in Brooklyn, Queens, the West Village and Harlem. His camera was also at his side while working as an officer at Rikers Island in the 1980s, where he took portraits of inmates that he later shared with their friends and families. Shabazz had his rolls of color film processed at a one-hour photo shop that provided two copies of each print: he typically gave one to his sitters, and the second he organized into changing albums to be shown to future subjects.

We talk about Jamel's experience as a street-photographer and what role New York City and its people play in his life.

Albums is available on steidl.de and in local bookshops.

Also check out our German-language literature podcast.

 

Interview and editing: Korbinian Veit

 

Many thanks to Susanne Schmidt, Michal Raz-Russo and Peter W. Kunhardt Jr.

 

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