Photographer Jamel Shabazz was first drawn to the camera by a desire to preserve memory. In this latest book, Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025, the artist celebrates the park's vibrant African American community, showcasing the beauty of the central Brooklyn oasis and the individuals who animate it.
Shabazz, known for his iconic street photography of the city’s Black community, said his drive to document began in junior high, nurtured by a father who was a photographer and never let him be without a lens or inspiration.
While many of his peers turned to graffiti during the 1970s, Shabazz felt drawn to something deeper, something more profound, he said, a calling to preserve the world unfolding around him.
“When I picked up the camera, it became natural for me,” said Shabazz. “When I took it to my junior high school and started to photograph my friend, it immediately opened up my third eye and allowed me to look at life from a very different perspective, and I started to see beauty and everything around me, and it gave me purpose.”
Shabazz's photographs in Prospect Park became an antidote to the violent, negative and hostile environment he once navigated while working as a corrections officer.
The book draws from decades of images captured during visits to the park after grueling workdays. He’d retreat there for solace, Shabazz said, and in those quiet moments, he often encountered others seeking the same sense of peace and therapeutic relief. In the park, he found the human emotion blossom in a beautiful, green space.
“As I looked at my photographs, I realized I was looking for love, I was looking for couples, I was looking for families," he said. "I was looking for fathers [and] mothers. I realized the reason why it did is because of all the negativity I was seeing, and I needed to create a counterbalance, both for myself but even for the viewers. I didn't want to continue to show images of misery.”
The book spans a time when Brooklynites were living through the War on Drugs, a global anti-narcotics political campaign that began under the Nixon administration, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the consequent years through 2025.
“When I was working in the jail, a lot of people I knew who were incarcerated were doing 20 to 30 years, and some were never coming home. So there was a side of me that I wanted to produce a book for them,” Shabazz said.
Over time, the photographer began hearing from incarcerated individuals about what a book depicting the Black community meant to them.
"You know, be able to see a train and a bus and people in streets they would never see again," he said. "So it really became medicine for them.”
Shabazz advises aspiring photographers to always carry their camera and allow it to awaken their “third eye.” And like every successful photographer, they should dedicate themselves to filling a void in their community, despite any criticism that may come.
Shabazz will appear at the official book launch event on Dec. 13 at Brooklyn's Powerhouse Arena. For more information, click here.
