JAMEL SHABAZZ

The Brooklyn-born Jamel Shabazz has captured the raw alchemy of street life across the world, but the photographer is best known for documenting the birth of hip hop in his hometown. His instinctual style allows him to capture city dwellers at their most confident and expressive—in moments of celebration, uproar, and ennui. On a humid evening in the ultimate crucible of humanity, Shabazz snapped a photo that has stuck with him to this day.

“It was a Saturday night in Times Square during the summer of 1981. It’s just a group of friends enjoying the evening with their boombox. I had just gotten home from Germany, where I’d been stationed, and I took this photograph during a period when I was rediscovering the New York that I had been so homesick for during those years. I used to hear the song “What’s Happening Brother” by Marvin Gaye in my head whenever I photographed the streets. That song is about a Vietnam [War] veteran coming back to America, and he’s trying to understand what’s happening.

As a young photographer who was trying to get better, Times Square was the place to go. Back then, it was like Las Vegas for many young people. People from all five boroughs and the rest of the world would gather there to see a movie, go to dinner, and just socialize. On this particular evening, I was developing my skills shooting at night, and as you can see from the composition, I was still figuring it out. Technically, this is not a good photo—it’s full of distractions. I spent pretty much the entire afternoon and early evening standing on the corner of 7th [Avenue] and 42nd Street. When the trains came in, hundreds of people would get off who I wanted to photograph; I would pull them over and show them my portfolio and engage with them, and like that I built up a body of work. I found a lot of couples, and focused my lens on love, diversity, [and] people from all over the world. When I saw this group, I thought, Everything is there. The fashion is there, the friendship is there, the hip hop is there. It just represented everything to me.”