New hip-hop exhibition at Fotografiska shows women aren’t left behind

Fifty years ago in New York City, a Jamaican-American teenager named Cindy Campbell tricked her brother into DJing at a block party she was hosting to raise money for her new back-to-school wardrobe. I requested. She created and distributed flyers inviting people to her room in a recreational apartment in the West Bronx, promoting her brother’s new stage name, DJ Cool Her Hurk. In August 1973, New York City went bankrupt and the Bronx was on fire as landlords set fire to their buildings for insurance money. There, many say, hip-hop was born at that party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. In the decades that followed, when unemployment reached record highs and thousands were displaced from their homes, black and Latino youth flourished at a time of acute economic and political hardship for the city. The cultural movement has turned into one of the world’s greatest phenomena. of the last century.

On January 26th, the exhibition “Hip Hop: Consciousness, Unconsciousness” opens at Fotografiska on Park Avenue, a 45-minute subway ride from the Campbells’ former home. Displayed across two floors, his 200 images trace hip-hop’s tremendous evolution from neighborhood jam sessions to a multi-billion dollar industry, and in the genre’s global dominance. It represents the role that photography has played. “Photographers were kind of midwives, helping people inside and outside the culture understand their value,” says Sasha Jenkins, co-curator of the exhibition with Sally Berman.

The show consists of groundbreaking documentary photography of the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s, including era-defining highlights like Jamel Shabazz. fly high (1982), It depicts a boy doing gymnastics on a pile of discarded mattresses. (In 2011, this image was used as his art on The Roots album. Undun.) portraits of the genre’s superstars (Biggie, Tupac, Public Enemy, De La Soul) are balanced by photographs of unnamed people, the MCs and DJs of hip-hop’s “four elements”. It recognizes the nature of community. , b-boying, graffiti writing.