In 1980, at the age of 20, Jamel Shabazz returned to his native Brooklyn after serving in the Army. He started taking pictures of the world around him with his 35mm camera and soon became a virtuosic urban documentarian—a street-style genius before the genre had a name. As one pages through Back in the Days (2001), the first of Shabazz’s 12 photo books—a Taschen retrospective is due in early 2025—it’s clear that he instinctively understood how streetwear was becoming a form of personal power. The images of B-boys and fly girls striking poses are not just great pictures of people wearing clothes well, but vital records of vigorous selfhood. They became the foundation for a career that has paid tribute to cultural figures, social protest movements, and resilient everyday New Yorkers.
Shabazz has never been an outsider lowering a clinical eye; he’s an admirer offering his lens as a conduit for others to express themselves. In the early days, it was his habit to carry albums of his work to share with potential sitters, as if inviting them to help him evolve his portfolio. He would develop extra prints—processed at a one-hour photo shop—to deliver to his subjects. Most impressive, he did all this in his off-hours. Between 1983 and 2003, Shabazz held a day job at the Department of Correction. He started just as the crack epidemic and the AIDS crisis were devastating New York. “You had to be bold to work under those conditions, but it was my assignment,” he says. He did a series of portraits of Rikers Island inmates, lawyers, police officers, and social workers that brim with empathy. Even after Shabazz’s breakout moment—a 12-page spread in a 1998 special issue of the hip-hop magazine The Source—he held on to the job. His first solo exhibition came four years later, at La Piscine Museum of Art and Industry, in Roubaix, France.
Shabazz shot this story for W a stone’s throw from the Brooklyn Museum, two weeks after a retrospective of his work had closed there. His concept was “tougher than leather”—a gesture toward that quality of unperturbed confidence generally known as “cool.” He wanted accessories that transformed everyday pedestrians into archetypal urban warriors—boots that evoked Mary J. Blige in a commanding stance, belts that were cultural signifiers rather than just accents on an outfit. “I’ve always wanted to be a stylist,” he says. In fact, he often was. When his career grew to include ad campaigns, his unofficial motto was “Just send me the product, and I’ll give you the style.”
“It’s not often that I get to shoot fashion for a publication,” he says of the pictures you see here. “Really, it’s a dream.” To prepare, Shabazz immersed himself in Gordon Parks’s photographs, with their juxtapositions of delicate frocks and delirious cityscapes, while keeping in mind the darkly dreamy tableaux of Helmut Newton. But ultimately, everything reverted to his enduring vision of community. “My objective was to create an image of diversity,” he says. “To portray a sorority of women giving each other strength.”
Hair by Matt Benns for Oribe at CLM; makeup by Kanako Takase for Addiction Tokyo at Streeters; manicure by Mamie Onishi and Nori for Addiction at See Management. Models: Mammina Aker at Official Models; Grace Brown at Muse Model Management; Tashawn “Whaffle” Davis, Ajak Dhieu at Kollektiv Mgmt; Antonio Macek at the Society Management; Ifrah Qaasim at Next Models; Jesi Shelnutt at Ford Models; Steph Shiu at Elite Models. Casting by Piergiorgio Del Moro and Samuel Ellis Scheinman at DM Casting.
Models: Mammina Aker at Official Models, Grace Brown at Muse Model Management, Tashawn “Whaffle” Davis, Ajak Dhieu at Kollektiv Mgmt, Antonio Macek at The Society Management, Ifrah Qaasim at Next Models, Jesi Shelnutt at Ford Models, Steph Shiu at Elite Models; Produced by Hudson Hill Productions; Producer: Anna Blundell; Production Manager: Arbelis Santana; Lighting Technician: Chad Hilliard; Photo Assistant: Heins Evander; Digital Technician: Pineapple Digital; Lab: Griffin Editions; Retouching: Dtouch Creative; Fashion Assistants: Ariel Matluck, Candace Sutton, Szalay Miller, Briah Taubman; Production Assistants: Sean Colgan, Jeff Cecere, Jack Eddy, Angal Field, Amber Koepke; Hair Assistants: Kat Cabrera, Tiana Amani, Yetunde Egunjobi; Makeup Assistants: Anna Kurihara, Miki Ishikura, Megumi Onishi; Tailor: Matthew Neff at Carol Ai Studio Tailors.