Jamel Shabazz, Inside the belly of the beast. 1985
Join the documentary photographers of Another Perspective. for a container-side chat about their work, their exhibition, and their cross-generational experiences with the criminal justice system.
Speakers: Jamel Shabazz Joseph Rodriguez Khary Mason
Location: Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
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Accompanying exhibition produced by Photoville with support by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation
Join the artists of Another Perspective. for a container-side chat. Another Perspective. is an exhibition centered on the lives of three photographers representing three generations that all have a connection to the criminal justice system and a common love for documentary photography. Joseph Rodriquez who was incarcerated as a teenager and used photography to address various aspects of incarceration from juveniles to prisoners who are aging out. A retired 20-year veteran of the New York City Correction Department, Jamel Shabazz’s work focuses on the lives of correction officers and the incarcerated. Khary Mason is a retired homicide detective from Detroit and his work focuses on his experience as an officer through a series of self portraits.
Jamel Shabazz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. At 15, he picked up his first camera and started to document his peers. In 1980, he embarked on a mission to extensively document New York City, from youth culture to a wide range of social conditions.
Shabazz says his goal is to contribute to the preservation of world history and culture. He has worked with a wide range of organizations centered on inspiring young people in the field of photography and social responsibility. He has been a teaching artist with the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, the Bronx Museum’s Teen Council youth program, the International Center of Photography, Friends of the Island Academy, and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Expanding the Walls Project.
Shabazz is the author of 5 monographs. He is presently working on a new book, The Book of Life.
Joseph Rodríguez is a documentary photographer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and in the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at the International Center of Photography in New York City.
Recent exhibitions of his work have appeared at Galleri Kontrast in Stockholm, Sweden; the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Fototeca in Havana, Cuba; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama; the Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls in New York; the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center; and the Kari Kenneti Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.
In 2001, the Juvenile Justice website, featuring Joseph Rodríguez’s photographs, launched in partnership with the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival High School Pilot Program.
Joseph teaches classes at New York University, the International Center of Photography in New York, and universities in Mexico and Europe.
Rodríguez won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1993 photographing gang families in East Los Angeles.
Khary Mason was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He is a former Detroit Police homicide detective. In 2020 Khary retired after serving 22 years. Looking back on his experiences, Khary often remarks on how altitude and the passage of time have given him a greater understanding of the world he seeks to change.
When Khary’s wife gave him his first camera in 2002, many years would pass before Khary realized that his emerging art practice was beginning to lay the foundation in examining the visual and written language of self defense through the art of storytelling. By studying his own lived experience, Khary was able to identify a causal link between stories being created/told by the individuals depicted in them, and their ability to inform the storyteller’s, and audience’s, belief in what is possible.
Khary, and Romain Blanquart launched Capturing Belief (CB) in 2016, a Detroit-based non profit that uses visual literacy and creative writing as instruments allowing students to better understand themselves and the world around them. In 2020 CB partnered with Inside Southwest Detroit to create “The Remote Ally Project”, an international initiative that allowed art lovers to experience the pandemic through the eyes of young people around the globe.
Khary is a Documenting Detroit Fellow (2019), studying the effects of incarceration on individuals and their families, as well as a Salzburg Global Fellow (2021), working with peers around the world on international issues of youth violence, safety, and justice. In 2022, Khary became a member of the faculty at The Kalish picture editing workshop held at Rochester Institute of Technology.
“No one should be able to tell your story better than you” KM
Founded in 2011 in Brooklyn, NY, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion, which we are always striving for, by ensuring that the artists we exhibit are diverse in gender, class, and race.
In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions.
By activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and highly innovative exhibition and programming environments, we join the cause of nurturing a new lens of representation.
Through creative partnerships with festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, Photoville offers visual storytellers, educators, and students financial support, mentorship, and promotional & production resources, on a range of exhibition opportunities.
For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com
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