Photographer Jamel Shabazz

There’s no mistaking photographer Jamel Shabazz. At 6-foot-3, he’s the tallest patron in Starbucks. Shabazz admits to being a '70s and '80s old-school guy, and dresses the part. He says gold isn’t his favorite color, but he’s wearing a lot of it. Thick, square-framed gold glasses shield his serious eyes. He wears a big gold ring, gold watch and a hip, buttery, gold leather jacket. He has a close-trimmed afro. He says his style hasn’t changed much since the old days.

Shabazz takes a seat upstairs in a quieter part of the coffeeshop and opens a portfolio of outtakes from his first book of photos, Back in the Days (powerHouse, 128 pages, $35). He laments the fact that his editors didn’t want to use any of his more serious photos for this book, shots of hookers and crack addicts and one of which he’s particularly proud: a very graphic image of a woman giving birth. The book is more a depiction of 1980s Manhattan black youth fashion, style and attitude than social commentary. It’s a yearbook of old-school flavor, before hip black dress was tagged "urban" and exported to the suburbs. All the old hallmarks of the 1980s are here: short ’fros with razor parts, gold-capped teeth, short shorts (on men and women), loose-laced Adidas shoes, bucket hats, backwards-turned Kangols, layers of gold medallions and those square-framed glasses. And then there’s the classic pose throughout the book: young men squat down dramatically on their haunches, as if surfing, arms on knees or splayed outward, fingers spread into claws, like they’re grasping for something–but not affecting any kind of gang affiliation.

Things have changed a lot since then. Shabazz, a jazz and r&b fan, doesn’t care much for hiphop. "I remember when the music was positive and had a message. When I look at it today, I’m not really finding it–that message is no longer there. I don’t really like a lot of what I’m seeing. There’s hostility in it, and I don’t like the profanity in the lyrics. Some will say it’s reality, and I won’t take that away from them, but I think we need to stay on a more positive level, because it has influence."

Shabazz was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in 1960. His father, a Navy photographer, taught him the craft. He started shooting at 15, and has since taken pictures all over the U.S., the Caribbean, Germany, Thailand and Japan; next year he’d like to go to Vietnam and the Philippines to photograph Amerasians. He spent a few years overseas in the military, and has been a corrections officer for 19 years. In the beginning he worked with adolescents, but now he works with the criminally insane, in a place boiling with violence, where slashings, rapes and "hang-ups" (suicides) are not uncommon. So what keeps Shabazz sane?

"Some people would deal with this job with drink. For me the camera was a release. The camera gave me peace of mind and the opportunity to venture into a world where I’m respected. Even now I look at my life like Clark Kent and Superman. When I step into my prison job I put on a uniform and I’m dealing with a lot of negativity. But when I leave my job I step into a world of fashion and journalism, and I’m respected as an artist. Photography has been my way out. It has been my drink. I shoot every day to maintain my sanity."

Shabazz cites two events as the most defining of his life: the birth of his daughter and Sept. 11. He was on his way to work that morning when the first plane hit. He was two blocks away from the crash, and was able to take a picture of the second plane hitting the second tower.

"After that I was just stunned," he says. "Once it was over I had to walk away and compose myself because I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. I thought it was just a bad dream." He hung around for several days afterward and helped in the rescue effort. The only bodies he found were dead ones. During breaks he took pictures. The most horrible part of the experience, he says, was handling the buckets of debris as they were passed down the line from man to man–buckets that smelled of death. Over those days, he says, he couldn’t sleep. "I was in pain. And I think about it every single day." Several of Shabazz’s images of Ground Zero are on display at the Here Is New York gallery show.

Shabazz is working on an autobiographical documentary film called Back in the Days: The Time Before Crack. His work is being shown in galleries worldwide. He says he has material for at least five more books, and would like eventually to focus his energies on journalism and documentary film.

He sounds wistful when he points to the photos from his book that move him the most. They appear in the back under the title "Gone but not forgotten–rest in peace." Each of these pictures has a sad story to tell. There’s the six-year-old girl–Shabazz’s goddaughter–who was raped and murdered. There’s the girl he went to school with who later died of AIDS. The young man who was killed in a massacre on Easter Sunday in 1986. His Marine Corps buddy who jumped in front of a train. The woman who got her throat slit and was then set on fire. The fellow corrections officer murdered with her two-month-old baby by her jealous ex-husband.

"Every picture’s a story," says Shabazz. "The more I show my work, the more I find that more and more young people have passed away. This book is like a tribute to them and their families."