spirit – Design You Trust

Vibrant Photos Capture Spirit Of 1980s New York City

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz first took up photography at the age of 15, and went on to create a peerlessly vibrant record of the city in the 1980s.

c. 1980. A boy does a backflip on a mattress in a lot in Brooklyn.

Jamel Shabazz/Getty Images

Drawing inspiration from the works of socially concerned photographers such as Gordon Parks and Leonard Freed, Shabazz roamed the streets and subways of New York, making both candid and effortlessly posed images of the city’s diverse denizens, especially black and Hispanic communities. Continue reading »

Heavy hand, sunken spirit: Mexico at war

Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit is an ongoing project about the societal costs and consequences of Mexico’s violent drug war. It frames the violence as a symptom, as opposed to the problem, and one of a variety of symptoms that will haunt the country for generations. This country is in the midst of a “conflict” in every sense of the word, and when documenting this conflict it is important not to reduce what is happening to a series of nearly anonymous images of carnage that could be happening anywhere. Continue reading »