Back in the Days: Remix, Jamel Shabazz, powerHouse Books

During the summer of 2000, Jamel Shabazz made an unannounced visit to the powerHouse books office. He arrived at the door with a small catalogue in hand from an exhibition of photographs from his archive that had recently been exhibited by Trace magazine in Paris. The cover of the catalogue featured a photograph that had delicately faded into a rich patina of blues and reds. In it, four boys posed in a formation that can be described best as a b-boy stance. Their attitudes dominate everything in the picture—the gesture, the clothing, the environment—everything that has made Brooklyn a universe unto its own.

It is this image that has now fills Brooklyn store windows and home, as it has become a poster for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s June film schedule. But over a decade ago, Jamel Shabazz carried this image with him on his first visit to a book publishing house and did the impossible—landed an unscheduled meeting that eventually lead to the publication of the landmark monograph, Back in the Days. When the book was first released, it swept the globe. New York, London, Paris, Berlin—the world was immediately at home with these images. Shot predominantly on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s, Shabazz’s photographs take us back to a time and a place that has long since given way to the modern ago.

Back in the Days is a family album, documenting the lives of people most of us will never know, people that Shabazz knew from and met on the City streets. As the photographer recalls, “Before each photograph, I took the time to engage most of my subjects about life and making the right choices, in order to survive. I did this because when I was younger, the older guys, in my community did it to me, so it was ingrained in me as a young child to give back, and I vowed that I would reach out to the youth in my community at all cost. They respected me because I wasn’t afraid of them, and I took an interest in their lives. It was beyond the photograph—I help many make career choices; I spoke to them about diet, education, and how to select the right mate. Each image that you see in my book is a visual record, of the countless encounters that I had with young people. I did it out of love and concern. I saw the crack epidemic making it’s way to my community and I wanted to avert as many as I could away from its destruction. So when you study the faces of those in my book, you are seeing faces of young men, women and children, who I just finished bonding with, young people who I told were special and were our future. Often times I would departed them with the words, ‘Everything you do today will reflect on your future.’ ”

By engaging his subjects in conversations about pride, self-love, respect, and self-empowerment, Shabazz charged each of his images with his own majestic spirit. As each man, woman, and child looks into his camera, they radiate the positive energy with which he imbued them. In we, as viewers, look at these people looking at us with so much love, pride, respect—power—that we get a jolt. It is as if what Shabazz has said to the people in these photographs is now being then transferred to us, the viewers.

It is the mystical spirit, the power of human energy that makes photography come alive, which has made Back in the Days one of the premier books of our time. The original edition has become an icon unto itself, a point of reference for those who love New York, urban culture, fashion, music, and art. Back in the Days is the story of a people coming of age. The generation that came into their own in the 1980s faced an onslaught of plagues—both crack and AIDS wiping out entire families within a single decade. At the same time, there was another spirit in the air—that which was new, was fresh, was by the people and for the people—there was a culture that synthesized old and new and built its credibility on originality, talent, and skills. As KRS-One memorably said, “Rap is something you do, Hip Hop is something you live.” Perhaps this the photographs from Back in the Days are understood no matter what language you speak, why so many who have discovered Shabazz’s work feel a visceral connection to people we have never met.

It is in honor of this connection that powerHouse Books releases Back in the Days: Remix in honor of the book’s 10th anniversary. Featuring countless never-before-published images, along with highlights from the original edition, the Remix provides us with a rare opportunity—to see a now-familiar world through Shabazz’s eyes fresh and new. So often in our travels we encounter the old adage, “If I had only known then what I know now…” Fortunate we are that Shabazz has the opportunity to tell his story for us anew, in the Remix with new images as well as an interview with Jeff Chang. Shabazz, who usually allows his work to speak for him and tell stories on their own terms, opens up to Chang in the interview, providing us with a powerful context in which to view his work.

Like the great James Van Der Zee, Shabazz’s photographs tell a story of America from the perspective of those who define its essence. As Shabazz told Chang, “My interest in the people I photographed was a direct result of my unconditional love for my community and my tenacious desire to participate in helping to create a peaceful and positive environment…. It was not until the release of both Back in the Days and A Time Before Crack, that I fully understood the magnitude of my efforts to document my people. These books provoked a lot of conversations and reconnected me with many of the people that were affiliated with that era. From these encounters, I learned about so many of the smiling faces that posed with such confidence. A great deal of the stories were about the impact crack and AIDS had during the 80s, but there were also stories about young men and women that against all odds, went on to make something out of their lives. Many of them went on to become doctors, professors, civil service workers, entrepreneurs, artists, and decent, everyday people trying to survive. I’m honored to have documented their lives and secured a permanent place for their legacy to be seen for many years to come.”

Miss Rosen