Posts from the “Exhibitions” Category

Lorraine O’Grady: Art Is…

Posted on November 2, 2015

Art Is… (Girlfriends Times Two), 1983/2009 Chromogenic color print 16 × 20 in. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York

Quiet as kept, the annual African-American Day Parade attracts millions of people each year as it arches through the heart of Harlem, beginning at Central Park North, and marching up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd to 136 Street. Founded in 1968 as an independent organization, the parade does not accept contributions. Instead, it was developed with the sprit of volunteerism and honoring the community. Featuring fire, police, and corrections departments, veterans associations, grand lodges, fraternities and sororities, step and drill teams, the African-American Day Parade is like Harlem Homecoming to the nation.

It was with in this spirit that conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady stages a performance piece, “Art Is…”, which she entered her own float into the September 1983 African-American Day Parade with fifteen collaborators dressed in white. At the top of the float was a gilded gold frame, enormous and ornate, like the type you’d find in a museum around a masterpiece. As the float went up the boulevard, it framed everyone it passed, providing a moving snapshot of the treasures of life. The words “Art Is…” were emblazoned on he float’s skirt, offering an open-ended point of view. “Art is anything you can get away with,” said Andy Warhol.

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home,” said Twyla Tharp. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism the world has ever known,” said Oscar Wilde. Art is any possibility you can imagine, even the idea that those two words could inspire countless ideas from all points of view. Just try it at home. Ask yourself to fill in the blanks. What is art to you?

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Art Is… (Girl Pointing), 1983/2009 Chromogenic color print 20 × 16 in. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York

Art Is… (Line of Floats), 1983/2009 Chromogenic color print 16 × 20 in. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York

Categories: 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Thomas Roma: In the Vale of Cashmere

Posted on October 22, 2015

Photo: Thomas Roma, “Untitled (from the series In The Vale Of Cashmere), 2010. Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in.

With In the Vale of Cashmere, Thomas Roma brings us into a little known Eden, one that has been quietly thriving for decades in the New York underground. The Vale of Cashmere is a secluded section of Prospect Park where black gay men cruise for sexual partners. Roma’s portraits of men set in an uncanny urban wooded landscape carry a history of New York and Brooklyn that predates and parallels the gay rights and civil rights movements.

A bard of Brooklyn, Roma is a poet-photographer who has been making profound images of the people of his native city since 1969. The founder and director of the photography program at Columbia, Roma works in a studio which he hand built in his Prospect Park South home, overseeing all aspects of production, from the development of the photographs to the design of his books.

In the Vale of Cashmere (powerHouse Books), Roma’s fourteenth monograph, will release to time with his inaugural exhibition at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, from October 29–December 19, 2015. This is Roma’s first major New York exhibition of new photographs since his acclaimed solo exhibition Come Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art in 1996.

In the Vale of Cashmere was created as a memoriam to Carl Spinella, one of Roma’s closest friends, who died in Tom’s arms of AIDS in 1992. Roma first met Spinella in 1974; a year later they were roommates living on Dean Street in Brooklyn. Spinella had been instrumental in bringing Roma to his native Sicily in 1978 so that Roma could discover his ancestral roots. (These images were later published as the book Sicilian Passage.) Their bond was so close that Tom often would drive Spinella to the Vale of Cashmere and sometimes pick him up at the drop-off site, an act of faith in a time before cell phones, when who knows what could happen in the woods.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Devin Allen: New Awakenings, In a New Light

Posted on September 4, 2015

© Devin Allen, courtesy of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/897723-exhibit-devin-allen-awakenings-new-light#HCRoIrR5UIJy23Lw.99

“People don’t understand Baltimore. They only think of ‘The Wire’…it’s worse than that. But we have a strong community. My city is real. There’s no sugar coating. It’s a small city. In twenty, thirty minutes I can be anywhere. You see the issues the people face. That’s why I love it so much. If you’re from Baltimore you can make it anywhere,” says Devin Allen, a 27-year-old amateur photographer whose pictures of the Baltimore uprising following the death of Freddie Gray in April of this year became iconic of the Black Liberation Movement born again.

The photographs, which began as a viral sensation, made it to the cover of Time Magazine, making Allen only the third amateur photographer to do so. Allen, a Baltimore native, grew up just five minutes away from the site of Freddie Gray’s fatal encounter with local police on April 12.

Allen photographed the uprising, which began April 18, and continued over the course of ten days. With an ongoing cycle of protests, arrests, and injuries, the tension increased until it reached the breaking point when the police refused high school students access to public transportation, preventing them from going home. Violence erupted, with police cars destroyed and a CVS Pharmacy burned and looted. A state of emergency was declared and the National Guard was sent in—but when it was all over, it was the people of Baltimore who came together to clean up the streets, maintaining the unity that they had created throughout the month.

In Allen’s eyes, the Baltimore uprising created, “Unity and love. In my city, that’s rare. People have difficulties. But we all united in one goal. We have to keep that up. We united for the protest, and once it stops, what do you do then? We love one another. There are multiple ways to fight. You can’t fix other issues if your home is not straight. I am a true activist for my city.”

Indeed, Allen has partnered with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, for the first solo show of his photographs titled Devin Allen: New Awakenings, In a New Light, now on view through December 7, in a new community space inside the museum called Lewis Now. The exhibition is free to the public, and has been designed to have interactive components. A number of the images have been enlarged to 20-feet wide and have been wheat pasted onto the wall by Allen, in a nod to the street origins of the images. Visitors can also write responses to the prompt, “Where were you?” on a timeline that shows a number of the events Allen captured in the photographs.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

© Devin Allen, courtesy of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/897723-exhibit-devin-allen-awakenings-new-light#HCRoIrR5UIJy23Lw.99

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko

Posted on September 1, 2015

JP Mika, Kiese na kiese, 2014, Oil and acrylic on fabric, 168.5 x 119 cm, Pas-Chaudoir Collection, Belgique
© JP Mika/Photo © Antoine de Roux

Since 1987, André Magnin, chief curator at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, has had a passion for the Congo which stirred his soul to travel the country and experience the people and their arts firsthand. In response to his thirty-year journey, he has organized Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko, a survey of paintings, photographs, sculpture, comics, music, and films now on view at Fondation Cartier, Paris, through November 15, 2015.

Organized chronologically, the exhibition begins in the 1920s, at the birth of modern painting in the Congo, when the nation was still a colony of Belgium. Having just survived the genocidal regime of King Leopold II, under which 10 million Congolese lost their lives, the art of this era had been in the shadows. Magnin obsessively search for work, drawing together pieces that reveal the way of life in the village, the natural world, the dreams and legends of the times.

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Djilatendo, Sans titre, c. 1930, Gouache and ink on paper, 24.5 x 18 cm, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, HO.0.1.3371
© Djilatendo/Photo © MRAC Tervuren

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography

Scott Nichols Gallery: It’s Only Rock and Roll

Posted on August 26, 2015

Photo: Baron Wolman, Jimmy Hendrix with Guitar, 1968

Photo: Andy Freeberg, BB King at Montreux, 1980

The late, great B.B. King observed, “Playing the guitar is like telling the truth—you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.”

King lived his life in this truth and gave this truth to the world. He who had said, “I never use that word, retire,” continued to play live performances until just months before his death, earlier this year, at 89 years old. King, one of the greatest blues musicians of our times, showing us that music is not just in your blood, it is in your soul. He understood the power of music to bring people together, to reach them in a way that nothing else could. He sagely advised, “You only live but once, and when your died your done, so let the good times roll,” and he set those words to song.

We feel his joy, long after he is gone, not just in his music but in the photographs taken of him throughout the years. “I want to connect my guitar to human emotions,” King said, and we are reminded of the power of his intention when gazing upon Andy Freeberg’s photograph of BB King at Montreux, 1980, which is currently on view in the group show It’s Only Rock and Roll, on view at Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco, now through September 16, 2015.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Gordon Parks: Ali

Posted on August 24, 2015

Gordon Parks, “Untitled”. London, England, 1966. Photo © The Gordon Parks Foundation, courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery.

In September 1966, LIFE magazine published, “The Redemption of a Champion,” by Gordon Parks, a profile of Muhammad Ali, who had recently changed his name to embody his newly adopted Islamic faith. An exhibition of photographs from the LIFE essay are currently on view in “Gordon Parks: Ali” at Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, through September 9, 2015.

For most in the United States, Ali’s move to Islam came as a shock. The public knew Cassius Clay as the Undisputed Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, who was as quick with his wit as he was with his gloves. They were soon to find out that as Muhammad Ali, the champ was a highly politicized leader intent on speaking truth to power, at whatever cost would come.

By joining the Nation of Islam, aligning himself with Malcolm X, and speaking out against the Vietnam War, Ali stood independent of the popular opinion of the day. Resisting the draft, Ali said, “Those Vietcongs are not attacking me. All I know is that they are considered Asiatic black people, and I don’t have no fight with black people.” Many Caucasian Americans were incensed by Ali’s stance, most evidently those in power, who would go on to strip the champ of his title and his passport, deny him a boxing license in every state, and sentence him to prison for refusing to be conscripted. Ali took the case all the way to the US Supreme Court, who, in 1970, overturned his conviction in an unanimous 8-0 ruling, with Thurgood Marshall abstaining.

But the days of reckoning were yet to come. In retrospect, 1966 looks like a more innocent time. Though controversial, Ali was still the champ. In an effort to turn the tides of public opinion in his favor, LIFE assigned Parks to cover Ali, and show a more intimate side of the man who would not back down. Parks, one of the masters of the medium, was the perfect match for Ali.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE.

Categories: 1960s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs and Latter-Day Santos

Posted on August 7, 2015

Rodríguez Calero, “The Apparition”, 1999, 36 x 24.

“Creation never gets easier, it is a constant struggle,” artist Rodriguez Calero observes. It is an intense undertaking, this desire to transform what exists in the mind’s eye into physical form. Working in collage, Calero creates a world all its own, a world that is at once anointed with spirits and ethereal energies that radiate from her work. Each image becomes an icon, inspiring devotion and creating a state of bliss that is wondrously soothing in its intensity. When taken individually, each is a work holds the power to draw you into its spell; when taken together, the cumulative effect is transformative.

“Urban Martyrs and Latter-Day Santos,” the first museum survey of Calero’s work, opens at El Museo del Barrio, New York, and runs through October 17, 2015. Calero’s original technique is called “acrollage,” a technique of layering glazes of luminous colors with rice and other kinds of paper. The blending of fermenting surfaces and stenciled patterns attains lustrous color and texture. Guest-curated by Alejandro Anreus, the installation includes 29 large acrollage canvases, 19 smaller collages, 13 fotacrolés (altered photography) on canvas board, and 3 works of mixed media on paper.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York, Calero draws on the rich traditions of her background to create a visual landscape that combines surrealist collage, Catholic iconography, medieval religious painting, hip hop, and street culture. The result is rich tapestry that evokes a lush and magical world that beckons from beyond the veil. Calero’s layered glazes are like a spider’s web, at once soft and whimsical, yet strong and intricate. Her work is sensitive and complex, quiet yet vibrant and deep, resonant as a clarion bell that gently tolls in the breeze.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

Rodríguez Calero, “Urban Hood II”, 2014, 48 x 72.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Engines of War: The Interview

Posted on April 22, 2013

Anthony Suau
Nearly 20,000 people…, 2003, Photograph, 13 x 19 in, Edition of 12

On March 28, Jamel Shabazz invited me to the opening of Engines of War, a group show curated by Charles Dee Mitchell and Cynthia Mulcahy at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc. in New York. The show overwhelmed, humbled, and inspired me with its well-thought mix of photojournalism, documentary work, portraiture, and video, which combined to a visceral feeling of fireworks exploding inside my chest, my heart beating faster and faster until I had to turn away to draw breath.

And in the midst of the intensity were images like Anthony Suau’s featured above, a respite, a smile, a giggle, a semblance of surreality and absurdity that makes me wonder what it’s all for. But it is not for me to answer, only for me to listen, and it is with great pleasure and reverence that I share here an interview with the curators, Mr. Mitchell and Ms. Mulcahy.

Please talk about the inspiration for Engines of War. What is it about this topic, and the way in which it is framed in this show, that is even more relevant now, in retrospect ten years after we first invaded Iraq ?

Cynthia Mulcahy: Dee Mitchell and I began talking in 2007 about curating an exhibition that examined war and out of these discussions came two exhibitions about war, both focusing on the first decade of the 21st century: XXI: Conflicts in a New Century in a City of Dallas cultural space in 2011 and this exhibition Engines of War in 2013 with a slightly narrower focus on the United States wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As curators of Engines of War we wanted to look at all aspects of a nation at war from the soldiers who fight the wars and their recruitment, the civilian populations of the United States and those of Iraq and Afghanistan, the politicians and governments and the media covering the wars, and we also wanted to look at the war industry itself and the manufacturing of weapons and military equipment and technology. In like manner, it was also very important for us to look at relevant issues related to a decade of war such as returning wounded veterans, civilian casualties, PTSD and the rise of military suicides.

As a nation now in our longest war in US history in Afghanistan, and having just passed the ten year mark on the US-led Iraq invasion, it certainly seems an appropriate and necessary time to reflect on our past history in the form of a curated visual arts exhibition examining war.

Jamel Shabazz
Cadet Major Mateo…, 2010
Digital C-Print photograph, 11 x 14 in, Edition of 25, Signed

Please talk about the photographers you selected, the stories, and truths they tell. I was very much intrigued by the group as a collective, the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

How did you conceptualize these specific photographer to tell the story of the Iraq War ? What does the group as a whole speak to about our assumptions about war as an industry, an act of aggression, and a “morality” play ? What can we learn by virtue of unconnected stories threaded together through the curatorial eye ?

Cynthia Mulcahy: : We waded through quite a bit of material, of which there is no dearth in the 21st century and the revolution in communications technology, in deciding what to include in the exhibition. We very much wanted to have a multiplicity of artistic practice approaches as well as perspectives, so we looked at the work of not just photojournalists and social documentary photographers but also street photographers and research-based practice artists as well as primary source material such as the war video game and digital comics series. The final contributors include American, Iraqi, British and Dutch artists and some original source material. Together and individually, these artists all powerfully either document or address the issues we as curators were looking at for the Engines of War exhibition and we hope the work as a whole serves to underscore the crucial societal role photojournalists and visual artists play in capturing and contextualizing history for the rest of us.

Eugene Richards
Shurvon at 6 a.m., 2008
Silver gelatin photograph, 20 x 24 in, Edition 4 of 30

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The photograph is both art and artifact, a witness to history and evidence of what has come before. I was particularly struck when looking at the dead and wounded. Please talk about how photography allows us to observe the horrors of war in what is a complex and compelling silent space. Where is the line when it comes to speaking these hard truths ? Or should there not be a line and should we be asked to go as deep as the “reality” goes ?

Charles Dee Mitchell: When planning the exhibition, we knew we would be addressing both the home front and the actual theater of war. (That in itself is an interesting phrase,) In its role as reportage, photography is always engaged in capturing a specific moment, and it is those moments of extreme human suffering or tragedy that are, as you said, the most problematic.

Working on the home front with veterans who have returned from the war with traumatic physical and mental injuries, Eugene Richards develops a close relationship with his subjects and becomes privy to intimate moments that when we encounter them in a gallery may seem disturbing or even invasive. But there is a shared intimacy here that infuses the work with the humanity and social urgency that has distinguished all of Richards’ projects.

On the other hand, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is working on the ground during an engagement that has horribly bloody consequences. His photographs are unflinching documents of modern, mechanized warfare. We might see similar images in the press when reading accounts of the war. Their presence in the gallery affords viewers’ a chance, if they choose, to engage them with greater intimacy. Ghaith’s work epitomizes the duality of “art and artifact” that you mention in your question. When you ask if there is a line being crossed here, I would answer that there is no line in this setting. Photographers like Ghaith are doing an important and dangerous job. Engines of War would not be what we hope is the honest inquiry it is without both his presence and Eugene Richards’ contribution.

Lisa Barnard
Floor Plan, 2013, C-Print on gloss, 50 x 2 in, Edition of 5

I was struck by the table downstairs that is a floor plan of an industrial base. Please talk about the industry of war and its connection to the media as a machine. How does the photograph/art work/exhibition both challenge and substantiate the military industrial complex as a being of supreme power (so to speak).How does the photograph interact with the subject of war itself ? How does its stillness in time call us to a kind of attention, a care and consideration for the subject itself, and does this attention cause us to question or reinforce our previous assumptions about the act of war by the US ?

Charles Dee Mitchell: The blueprint produced by Lisa Barnard depicts not an “industrial base” but rather the floor plan of a trade show devoted to drone technology. Its layout is familiar to anyone who has ever attended a trade show or for that matter an art fair. Major exhibitors have large central locations with smaller exhibitors in less expensive booths along the perimeter. There are food courts, restrooms, and lounge areas. This piece, perhaps more so than any work in the exhibition, demonstrates that war and the technology that fuels it is big business. We presented the work on a glass-topped table so viewers’ could peer down at it and explore it as one does a map or a maze. Although a wall label explained exactly what the image presented, most people seemed to find the label after spending time with the floor plan. The label sent them back to Barnard’s image with more specific information to bring to their experience of its cool abstraction. This was the type of process we hope repeats itself in many ways throughout the exhibition.

Christopher Morris
Cadets listen…, 2009
Archival Ink Jet, 20 x 24 in, Edition 1/6

Benjamin Lowy
Iraq | Perspectives I…, 2003-2008, Digital C-Print photograph, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 10, 2 AP

Engines of War
Now through May 4

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Jim Naughten – Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia

Posted on March 13, 2013

Herero Woman in Patchwork Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Cavalry Marching” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Woman in Blue Dress” (2012) ©Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Costume. How we define ourselves when we stand upon the world’s stage and read from the scripts we draft. In donning an ensemble, we assume a posture, an attitude, an aesthetic that we accept as how we see ourselves, and how we wish to be seen. Costume can shape identity the way the corset shapes a woman’s waist. It can take hold and command a sense of respect, of pride, and of purpose, and in this way it can become the most subversive thing on earth.

This is evidenced in Jim Naughten’s new series of photographs collected in Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia, both a book published by Merrell and an exhibition at Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn that opens March 14 and runs through May 4. In Naughten’s photographs, the Herero stand tall against a blue sky, radiant like flowers blooming across the desert floor. They are garbed in fine style, a look the world has never seen, a post-colonial aesthetic that commands authority as it illustrates the defiant spirit of the Herero peoples.

The Herero arrived in Namibia in the eighteenth century, bringing with them horses, ox-drawn wagons, guns, and Christianity. As Lutz Marten writes in the introduction to Conflict and Costume, “They also brought new styles of clothing, and it was during these early days of contact with the wider world that the Herero were first introduced to the military uniforms and Victorian-style dress.” As their economy developed, the Herero took to sartorial expression of their success.

“Herero Man in Yellow Suit” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

In 1884, Namibia was annexed by the Germans to forestall British encroachment. The Germans, however, made for cruel rulers, with their brutally enforced notions of racial supremacy, alternately slaughtering or enslaving the populace. The Herero resistance led to a full-scale war from 1904-08. About 80% of the population was killed. In 1915, the German colonial army was defeated by South African forces, which then annexed the country until 1988. But it was the brutal war against the Germans that became central to the rebuilding of the Herero cultural identity.

Shortly after the end of World War I, the Herero created the Otruppe, a symbolic, rather than actual army. From the uniforms of the killed or departed Germans, a regiment was born, and women joined in creating grand dame gowns that befit the most regal ladies in the world. The Herero have created a highly detailed and symbolic form of costuming for the regiments, which are donned at ceremonies and festivals to commemorate the past take on a level of radical chic. “To the victor go spoils,” it has been said. To assume the costume of the enemy in memory of those who gave their life is nothing short of a kind of victory that few could ever imagine.

As Naughten observes, “Namibia is an extraordinary country, and perhaps most interesting to me is the stories that we don’t know, the ones that have been lost or fragmented in aural tradition. There’s very little literature from the last hundred years or so, but there’s a tangible sense of history in the ghost towns, colonial architecture, cave paintings, and the landscape that feels otherworldly and timeless.

“When I look at the dresses and costumes I see a direct connection with this period with an almost a ghostly imprint of the German settlers. I see my images as both a study of and a celebration of the costume, and not as a formal documentary on Herero culture, and I the paradoxical nature of the story is one of the most interesting aspects. Why would the Herero adopt the cloths of the very people who cost them so dearly?

“I see the clothes as symbolic of survival and strength, but particularly of a kind of defiance. In that sense, they are heroic. The taking and wearing of their enemies clothing is considered a way of absorbing and diminishing their power. They march and drill after the German fashion of the period, and ride horseback with extraordinary skill (horses were introduced by the settlers). To me the Herero are undiminished and have an extraordinary grace and presence.”

Naughten’s portraits are as majestic as the people he photographs, imparting a feeling of beauty and power that many in the West rarely consider twhen they think of Africa today. Naughten’s photographs of the Herero show us what victory truly means, and how it is that every day we walk this earth, we honor those who came before us, embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly on mankind and transforming it into a symbol of cultural and personal pride.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 13, 2013

Herero Man with Cow's Head (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Herero Woman in Orange Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: Brooklyn Represent

Posted on January 8, 2013

The Brooklyn Central Library stands proudly at Grand Army Plaza, firmly set in the Northwest corner of Prospect Park, shining bright with gold inlays upon its façade, recalling nothing so much as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Inside the library, the ceiling soars high above, opening its many collections to a public that loves books for pleasure, for knowledge, for enlightenment—much like Jamel Shabazz himself.

Shabazz, a native of Brooklyn, currently has a four-part exhibition on display at the Central Library now through February 28, 2013, which has been produced in conjunction with a self-published thirty-year retrospective of his photographs titled Represent: Photographs from 1980–2012. The exhibition is organized in four parts, each display in a different location on the first two floors. In the atrium of the ground floor stands an edit from Represent, a broad swath of color, spirit, and style as Shabazz see the people of the world.

He explains, “ Since picking up my first camera nearly thirty-five years ago, I was intrigued with how people within my community represented themselves. As time passed, I embarked on a self-imposed assignment to document the people of the world around me. I have been very fortunate to meet many wonderful and diverse people from around the globe, and each experience has enriched me in ways that far surpassed what I learned in history books.” His photographs bring that home, as we see people from all walks of life in their native dress, be it Dominican adolescents in their pageant best or two little Jamaican girls, with their afro puffs glorious in yellow, black, and green, or the Italian men, lined up in the window of a café in Little Italy, staring down the camera like they’re on the set of a Scorcese film. And we’re just getting started.

One of Shabazz’s many gifts is taste, his honing in on people killing it with their pride of purpose and the dignity that belies human greatness. It is seen in the dress, the posture, and the determination of spirit that he captures that make each person he pictures a king and queen. This is most evident in the installation along the balcony of the second floor, grandly overlooking the atrium and out the front doors. Here Shabazz gives us “Men of Honor and Women of Distinction,” a sweeping tribute to the heroes of modern life. In perhaps the most lovely social networking moment I’ve had in some time, Shabazz posted a brilliant portrait of eleven black women perfectly dressed in a bouquet of pastel suits and slinky heels, perfect coiffures and more than a couple of hats. To which, Spike Lee asked, “Who are they?” and Shabazz answered “Women of God.”

This is but one in a series that pays tribute to the traditions of family, community, nation, and global village, the very now that allows the earth to carry six billion people. Shabazz gives us a glimpse into but a few lives he has connected with over the years, as they organize themselves in groups or around distinguished individuals. He speaks of being influenced by dapper men of Caribbean descent, standing erect and proud. It is this bearing and carriage that Shabazz sees when he looks at law enforcement, military personnel, elders, social and political activists, and every day people organized for the greater good of our world. Whether wearing a uniform of Sunday best, in these photographs Shabazz bears witness to the men and women who uphold the principles of family, community, and civil service.

Nestled into the entrance of the Brooklyn Collection, just off the balcony, is “Reflections,” a series of over eighty photographs depicting the people of Brooklyn. There’s a lot of talk about Brooklyn, there always was. Maybe it’s something in the water, or it’s in the air. Shabazz’s photographs remind us of this, like nothing else; that despite all of the diversity of ethnicity, culture, and custom, there is something that unites these beautiful people together and that is the ground upon which they walk. I’m saying, it comes up through the ground. And in these photographs we feel it, Shabazz being a native and understanding that here we walk upon sacred ground.

Lastly, and perhaps most touchingly, is the installation up front, “Pieces of a Man” in the Foyer Cases, which you can catch when you are coming or going—both are good. Here Shabazz shows us an intimate glimpse into the art that inspires him, as a man and an artist and a native of this here Brooklyn. It begins with Leonard Freed, Black in White America, and it forces us to ask the question, what’s really changed, and what’s really good. Tough questions. We usually talk around them. But not Shabazz. He presses forth, he brings in the music of an era. 45s, 8 Tracks, we’re talking Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan. The list goes on. There are magazines, books, images, texts, stories, each one adding to the next, until the experience of these cases becomes a diary written by the voices of the world we know, but never fully see, until into it Shabazz brings his voice, like a bell tolling with perfect clarity.