Due to concerns surrounding the spread of the Coronovirus/COVID-19, this event has been postponed.
Join us at ICP’s shop for the book launch of Jamel Shabazz’s City Metro, a monograph chronicling the development, passengers, fashion, and way of life on board New York City’s mass transit system. Shabazz will be signing books from 7 to 8 PM.
City Metro will be available for purchase in ICP’s shop for $45.
Limit of two signed copies per customer. Books must be purchased from ICP’s shop. If purchased before date of event, please bring your receipt. For more information, please contact: programs@icp.org.
About City Metro
Jamel Shabazz has long been recognized as one of the leading figures on the New York street photography scene. Born and raised in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he has spent the past four decades documenting the rapidly changing social fabric of New York City. Active humanism drives Shabazz in his imagemaking, as he consistently seeks to show and preserve the city’s many populations, regardless of their age, class, race or occupation, with the New York City transit system serving as the natural backdrop to many of his most iconic images. The publication City Metro showcases Shabazz’s eye for capturing the integrity and beauty of the city’s communities and the extent to which New York City transit system serves as a ritualistic glue of urban life.
Since its inauguration in 1904, the subway has become an essential part of the city’s identity with several millions of journeys carried out every day. As the favored means of transport for New Yorkers over the last century, it has historically been recognized as a source of artistic inspiration, with notably Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, and Bruce Davidson each turning their lenses to the crowds that have populated its carriages. For Shbaazz, the subway represents a pathway for adventure and meeting new people. He began his study of the subway’s crowds in the 1980s and has consistently photographed its activity ever since. With an insatiable appetite for images, he spends countless hours a day documenting this profound underground world, often favorite the lines where he might cross friends or familiar faces. City Metro documents these passengers going about their everyday lives, showing the city’s humanity, and preserving these significant moments in world history and culture.
Bio
Jamel Shabazz is known for his photographs of New York during the 1980s. A documentary, fashion, and street photographer, he has authored nine monographs. His photographs have been exhibited worldwide and his work is housed within the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Bronx Museum. Over the years, Shabazz has taught young students at the Studio Museum in Harlem’s “Expanding the Walls” Project, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture “Teen Curators” program. Shabazz is the 2018 recipient of the Gordon Parks award for documentary photography.