In Fall of 2025, legendary photographer Jamel Shabazz returns visually to his native Brooklyn with Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025 (Prestel, October 7) — the place where it all began.
Coming of age in the 1960s and 70s, Shabazz remembers Prospect Park as an oasis amidst an endless expanse of glass, steel, and concrete just beyond its 19th-century stone masonry walls. But it wasn’t until 1980, when he returned home after serving a 36-month tour in the US Army, that everything came into focus. Back on the block, Shabazz carried a camera in his hands as he embarked on his life’s work as a photographer. First stop, Prospect Park, a place that would become equal parts sanctuary, plein air studio, and training grounds over the next 45 years.
From the outset, Shabazz understood photography as a healing balm, a form of “visual medicine” that became an essential practice after joining the New York City Department of Correction in 1983 at 23 years old. Over the next two decades, Prospect Park became a refuge from the brutality he witnessed at Rikers Island everyday, reconnecting him with the transformative power of nature, humanity, community, and connection exemplified by the park’s fabled Afro-Caribbean Drummer’s Grove. It was here that Shabazz met Vietnam veteran and activist Richard E. Green, who contributes an essay to the book alongside documentary photographer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and New Yorker senior photo editor Noelle Flores Théard.
Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025 showcases Shabazz’s signature street portraits with luminous landscape, tender documentary, and hypnotic street photographs to evoke the restorative, nurturing powers of the natural world across the printed page.
Prospect Park : Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025
By Jamel Shabazz
USD $45.00 / CAD $60.00
Published by Prestel: October 7th, 2025.
ISBN: 978-3-7913-9377-3
Wobneb Magazine 
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