HYCIDE MAGAZINE
IN RETROSPECT: FORWARD EVER, BACKWARD NEVER | words and images by Jamel Shabazz
My inspiration for wanting to become a photographer was greatly influenced by my father, who was a professional photographer by trade. Growing up in a household surrounded by family photographs, along with images from the numerous photography publications my father had in his library, sparked my curiosity early on, way before I even picked up my first camera.
FORWARD EVER, BACKWARDS NEVER
BIKE LIFE
BULLETPROOF AMBITION
BLACK BERLIN
WHAT IS WHITE PRIVILEGE?
BROOKLYN BABY
HOW WE MOVE
NWA JENOSID
STILL STANDING
NEGRO REMOVAL
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
THE DIRTY
NIGHT CRAWLERS
BLOOD AND SOIL
STEEL & VELVET
BROOKLYN BABY
Roy Ayers said it best in his 1972 classic song, “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby.’’ The culture and essence of Brooklyn are in its people. Brooklyn has evolved tremendously since my years growing up in the 80’s in Bed Stuy "Do or Die.'' It was a time of Big Wheels, flipping on discarded mattresses (pre-bed bugs)…
Fifty Four Eleven
Fifty-Four Eleven is NYC slang for the high-top Reebok Freestyle Classic sneakers. Made popular and stylish by NYC girls throughout the boroughs, $54.11 was the price of the sneakers after taxes. They were the must-have kicks of the 80’s and 90’s and came in just about every color. Like all classics, they’ve never gone out of style…
HYCIDE explores the roles we create for ourselves and those created for us, challenging the status quo while bearing witness to the feared, neglected and misunderstood.
Our Mission: Stories of survival and freedom. No judgment.
THAT WAVE
THAT WORK
HYCIDE THE 5 WARDS
The 5 Wards, part of Newark Celebration 350, features images from a team of photographers showcasing the multifaceted neighborhoods, businesses, landmarks and green spaces within each ward. The series will also include portraits of 25 Newarkers by acclaimed photographer and HYCIDE Editor-in-Chief, Akintola Hanif…
HOW WE MOVE
Corey Hamlet, a.k.a. C-Blaze or Blizzie, grew up in some of Newark’s most notorious housing projects and started gangbanging in his early 20s. After losing his college football scholarship, he went on to become a high-ranking member of the largest Crip set on the East Coast, the Grape Street Crips. In February 2016, the U.S. Attorney...
SACRED DIVAS
At age 12, Nyeesha Williams was sexually assaulted twice on the same day. The crimes were separate, each involving a different relative from her stepfather’s family on a visit to South Carolina.
“I was traumatized, I couldn’t even admit to myself what had happened,” Williams remembers…
NWA JENOSID
NWA JENOSID, which means “Black genocide” in Hatian Creole, is the title of HYCIDE’s traveling exhibition, debuting in Miami during Art Basel this week. It features images by HYCIDE Editor-in-Chief Akintola Hanif and photographers Jamel Shabazz, Nema Etebar, Khalik Allah and artist Adrian Franks…
ALONG THOSE LINES
Their role in the history of Newark’s self-image is small and mostly uncredited. In generically-labelled files, like “Janitor” and “Nursing Aid,” are the decades-old images of city workers and residents, photographed for long-forgotten municipal PR campaigns. They are among thousands of photos housed in the City of Newark’s Archives &…
STILL STANDING
Al Tarik-Onque was born and raised in Baxter Terrace, a low-rise public housing project on Orange and Nesbitt Streets built in 1941 and demolished in 2009. He is Senior Aide to Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and co-founder of Stop Shootin’ Inc., a city-based anti-violence organization…
ELEVEN80
My personal experience with Newark’s gentrification began on a summer day in 2007, when my mom and I took a stroll downtown.
We lived right off Orange Street, a stone’s throw from West Market Street and close to Central Avenue, three main drags fast becoming vectors for the development that would soon reach our home. On the day of our walk, we started out at the top of West Market Street — near the hulking, abandoned United Hospital complex — and continued past the intersection of Broad & Market…
HYCIDE LAUNCHES THE NEWARK ISSUE
HYCIDE magazine celebrates stories and images of Newark, by Newarkers, with a special print issue. The city-based photojournalism and arts journal collaborated with Rutgers-Newark students and faculty on a project that explores the lives of residents whose authentic voices and images rarely appear in mainstream media…
NEGRO REMOVAL
In 1987, Newark officials and invited guests sat atop grandstands to view the demolition of the Edward W. Scudder Homes, one of four high-rise housing projects in the city. The cheers of onlookers punctuated the din of the imploding buildings. For many years, the projects symbolized all that was wrong with the city…
NEWARK LOOKS LIKE THIS
This year, Barat decided to bring the hashtag to life, collaborating with photographer and HYCIDE Editor-in-Chief Akintola Hanif on a street art campaign featuring Hanif’s black and white portraits of the everyday people who live and work in Newark. Two days before the parade, the first batch of images were wheat pasted on walls…
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
In The Golden Triangle, which marks HYCIDE's second anniversary, we’re taking it back to our roots—street photography. This issue is a collaboration between myself and photographers Nema Etebar and Jamel Shabazz, the two men who are closest to me, and whose work I deeply admire...
THE DIRTY
In The Golden Triangle, which marks HYCIDE's second anniversary, we’re taking it back to our roots—street photography. This issue is a collaboration between myself and photographers Nema Etebar and Jamel Shabazz, the two men who are closest to me, and whose work I deeply admire…
NIGHT CRAWLERS
For more than 20 years, the cavernous club has been a well-kept secret in downtown Newark, continuing to thrive long after NYC goth clubs and industrial dance halls have folded. It survives by being a kind of umbrella institution for various alternative sects: rivetheads, vampires, drag queens, aging punks, metal heads, eccentric loners and…
BLOOD AND SOIL
When Lt. Jason Hiecke used to wear his National Socialist Movement uniform in public, most people didn’t notice the swastika. “They usually think I’m in the military,’’ explained Hiecke, who wore the uniform for a HYCIDE photo shoot when we met him at a Burger King near Princeton in July. Uniforms are important to the NSM---they’re facists…
STEEL & VELVET
“When I first saw Back in The Days on a shelf at Scrap Yard, a graffiti based memorabilia store in Soho, I had never heard of Jamel Shabazz or purchased a photography book before. Immediately, I picked it up, skimmed through it and bought it. That book changed my life and career path. It made me believe in the power of documentary portraiture. Jamel and I were introduced shortly after at…
SHOTTAS: Russell Frederick
In Russell Frederick’s photos, everyday people become kings and queens.
Shot in black and white, which gives them a timeless look, his subjects are elegant, no matter how tough, and beautiful in the face of adversity. His portraits of Hurricane Katrina victims reflect the grace in their will to survive, no matter how great their suffering…
LOVE OVER EVERYTHING
Even if you've never met him, there's something familiar about Jersey rapper MoRuf. Maybe you went to school with him and used to check him at lunchtime where he spit clever lines that always made you laugh. Ya’ll lost touch after high school. He stuck with it. Now, having graduated from college this past May, Moo feels that there’s nothing holding him back…
BEAUTY IN THE BAD
People are always shocked that I’m from Newark and still live here. They tell me to hurry up and get away and say shit like, “Oh no, I couldn’t live in Newark, I don’t know how you do it.” Exactly. If you aren’t from here, you wouldn’t understand. That’s the saddest thing.
You can’t look at me and pinpoint where I’m from—people tend to view me as bourgeoisie. But I’m a Newark native, aboriginal—it’s all in my accent. If I left today, it would still be a part of me. It’s in my blood work.…
NEW HOPE
I remember driving past New Hope Village for years and thinking to myself, “I ain't going in there.” It seemed like the kind of place you could get robbed or shot on a humble. There were always wild-looking dudes outside the buildings, just lurking. I’d forgotten my childhood friend Bre' grew up in New Hope Towers (a taller version of New Hope Village right next door), so I was there often through my high school years. It was the same way back then, but this was before I became a photographer and started to venture out into different hoods to shoot and connect with strangers…
BOLD AS LOVE
Photographer Nema Etebar has seen a lot of love on the streets of Philadelphia, his hometown. For Valentine’s Day, we asked him to choose a few of his favorite images of lovers…
HARLEM I(nF)LUX
One spring evening in 2008, I was discussing the so-called winds of change blowing through upper Manhattan with my Building Word Power class at CUNY when a distraught student shouted, "They're taking our neighborhood!" The ensuing conversation about gentrification and change prompted tears from my students and my own resolution to document what the people of Harlem were saying about their community. And so I set about cataloging Harlem through the faces of Harlemites -- and Harlemites of every stripe…
SUBTERRANEAN
On any given day, roughly 4.5 million people ride the subway in New York City. The train runs along the track with a hypnotic rhythm, only occasionally interrupted by the conductor’s inaudible announcements.
I’ve been riding the subway system with a camera in hand for the last three years. Making photographs in the subway began as a means to avoid foul weather. Rain, sleet, hail and snow drove me underground into the warmth of the tunnels. What I discovered kept me there. I’ve succumbed to its enchantment.…
BACK TO EDEN
White people in search of tans aren’t the only ones who go to the beach. But pop culture images of the shore usually focus on a single type — Malibu Barbies and Kens, and more recently, the bulked-up, hair-gelled cast of "Jersey Shore.''
They look nothing like the people in Wayne Lawrence’s photo essays, Orchard Beach: The Bronx Riviera and MIA: Soliloquy of a Dream. “It’s uncommon in American culture to see images of Black and Latino people at the beach,” says Lawrence, who lives in Brooklyn…
MY YOUTH
I enjoy photographing young people because they’re a lot less guarded, more fluid. There’s no posing or reoccurring stance with kids, like there is with adults. For the most part, a man wants to take a manly picture and a woman wants to take a pretty or sexy picture but kids don't care.
I appreciate their lack of pretension, that they aren’t yet completely tainted by people’s expectations. I also see an ingeniousness that comes from a lack of certain vices that adults have -- money, cars, clothes, etc -- that allows them to just do their own thing…
WHITE LINES
White people don’t like the term “White privilege” because it sounds like the kind of rhetoric "angry Black people" use to make us feel guilty. But if we don’t have to worry that our sons could be murdered for walking through a gated community at night, we’re privileged. And it’s a privilege we enjoy because we’re White, or more specifically, because we aren't Black.
If George Zimmerman can be acquitted for murdering Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teen, we know something is horribly, horribly wrong with America…
FEMME FATALE
Miss Numa Perrier is a mystery to many. We met several years ago, very early on in my career. She responded to an artist call I sent out for an exhibition at the McKenna Museum in New Orleans, where I was director and curator. The minute I opened her email, my jaw dropped. I was like, who the hell is this woman? And why is her work so damn bad? (In the words of Run-DMC, not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.) I felt like I was running in a poppy field and stumbled upon a buried treasure. From that time on, our professional relationship was established and our friendship grew…
BORN IN THE BRONX
At the dawn of hip-hop, Joe Conzo was a shy chubby 15-year-old using his camera as an icebreaker. But his black and white shots of the earliest DJs and MCs went on to become the definitive visual record of hip-hop’s origins.
“We all thought it would come and go. I had no idea that 30 years later I’d be doing a book and traveling the world,” he says. Conzo’s book, "Born in the Bronx," captured pioneers like The Cold Crush Brothers—friends from high school who asked him to take their picture –their rivals, The Fantastic Five, and dozens of other founding fathers…
BUT THEN WE DID
Two years ago,we launched HYCIDE Magazine because we believed the world needed to see the images and stories we present.
Since then, because of the many people who have donated their work and talents, we've been able to remain committed to that goal.
Today, we celebrate our second anniversary with a look back at some of our best images from the last year, which marked an expansion of HYCIDE's vision…
BLACK TEA
After spending over a month in Rwanda, I found myself in an off road truck, driving through the deepest forest to document one of the largest areas of tea fields in the country, the Gatare Tea Plantation, located at the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rwanda has been exporting and sharing its tea with the world for many years…
BY STORM
On October 29, Hurricane Sandy landed in New York, causing more than $71 billion in damage. Months after the disaster, the communities most affected are still struggling to recover. While Sandy wreaked havoc throughout the five boroughs and Long Island, the Rockaway section of Queens was particularly devastated. The tragedy left much of the peninsula unrecognizable to residents of the community, as well as city dwellers that used it as a summer escape from the pressures of living in New York…
DUTCH NOIR
Thanks to tourism, and also large communities of Caribbeans living in the United States, many U.S. citizens know a great deal about the French, Spanish, English and Portuguese-speaking Diasporas. However, even in African Diaspora Studies, we learn little or nothing about the Dutch Caribbean or its children.
Ninety percent of the people I know can’t even point to Suriname on a map (let me help you out, it‘s right next to Guyana and above Brazil). The Dutch Caribbean, which is also part of South America, includes Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao and a cluster of smaller islands, such as St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius…
GRAY
I’m not asking people to challenge the police or go up against them. We just need to start protecting our own....No matter what age you are, you’re prone to be stopped, harassed or killed by the police.... At Kimani’s funeral his mother tried to pull him out of the casket, telling him, “Get up Kiki, get up. “ It's hard to see that kind of pain and not do anything.
--Fatima Shakur, New Black Panther Party member and rally co-organizer…
WAGES OF WHITENESS
The election of Barack Obama led to predictions of a new racial tomorrow. Longing to fulfill the dreams of the Civil Rights Movement, many speculated about America’s continued racial progress, wondering if 2008 would be the start of a post-racial epoch in the U.S. While they expressed hope for a world where race no longer determines opportunities, fantasies of a raceless America often reflect a desire to stop talking about race…
STICKY PAGES
For my seventh birthday, my brother bought me the cassette single of that Lisa Lisa joint, Let the Beat Hit ‘Em. I used to carry it in my book bag every day, and when the urge hit me, I’d take it out, slide it under the desk, and stare at the cover image: a fine ass Puerto Rican kneeling and caressing an old school microphone with the illest delicacy. Eyes closed. Slight smile. Pleather pants shining brighter than Vaseline on foreheads and clinging tight to her curves like a jealous boyfriend. But this was all an afterthought. The first thing that invariably caught my eye was the titty hanging out of her jacket…
ISL • AM • ERICA: NEW MUSLIM COOL
“For young Muslims in America, style is often a delicate balance between seeking God’s pleasure and seeking the ‘cool,’’’ says Suad Abdul Khabeer.
Khabeer was a program advisor to the 2009 PBS documentary New Muslim Cool and its planned companion book, isl • am • erica , which explores the multifaceted, multi-ethnic identity of young Muslims in the U.S.
New Muslim Cool, directed by Jennifer M. Taylor, chronicled three years in the life of Jason “Hamza” Pérez, a Puerto Rican-American Muslim rapper coming of age in a post 911 era…
PALACES INTRIGUE
Shabazz Palaces has always cultivated an air of mystery, from their spiritual sci-fi sound to their nearly invisible public image. When the group anonymously released its first EP, “Of the Light,’’ in 2009, there were no online photos of them and no Shabazz Palaces Facebook or Twitter pages. People thought they were a one person act. But Shabazz Palaces is a duo, comprised of Tendai “Baba” Maraire, whose parents are well-known masters of African Mbira music, and Ishmael Butler, a.k.a “Palaceer Lazaro.” In a former life, he was “Butterfly” of Digable Planets, which celebrates the 20th-anniversary of its hip-hop classic “Reachin” this year…
THE WARDS OF NEWARK
Newarkers didn’t always trust Manuel Acevedo when he stopped to take their picture on the street. He was a long-haired 19-year-old in sandals. And on some blocks, Boricuas (Puerto Ricans) like Acevedo weren’t welcome. To put them at ease, he showed them an album filled with black and white images of other locals. If they said yes, their own photos were added to the book. “It was really important. When I got into situations, mostly males, would be like ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ And I’d say, ‘no no. here.’…
VILLAGE OF WIDOWS
Almost 20 years ago, the world began to hear about Rwanda, a small landlocked country in East Africa. Suddenly, the international media was filled with stories about the “100 Days War,’’ a battle fueled by political factions igniting ongoing tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. More than 800,0000 people were killed in 100 days, nearly eradicating the Tutsis and destroying the nation…
GRILLS
I was introduced to the work of Sir Williams during a call for submissions I sent out when I curated “H(A)UNTED,” an exhibition for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Dias- pora Institute (CCCADI) in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin. I wanted to explore the historical criminalization and stereotyping of Black men and boys. Fletcher submitted several of his grills for consideration and I was blown away, immediately.
Fletcher explores various intersections of masculinity, bling, street consumerism and stereotyping. He questions whether or not hip hop and its stars are products of their environment or producers of such…
TE SIENTO [I FEEL YOU]
On the plane to Puerto Rico, I had visions of a tropical paradise filled with beautiful people with golden tans and shiny black hair.
Then I started talking to the man sitting next to me. He warned me not to trust anybody based on how they looked and whatever I did, not to go to La Perla, a notorious ghetto outside of Old San Juan. He told me "the people there will rob you” and “outsiders aren’t welcome.” I took what he was saying into consideration and added La Perla to my to do list…
HIGH POINTS
When legendary photographer, Chester Higgins, Jr. first became interested in photography, there were no photography schools. Back then, during the 1960s, a student had to learn from another photographer. Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama where Higgins was a student, used photography to market the school. Inspired by the work of Tuskegee’s official photographer, P.H. Polk, Higgins realized he had never seen images of his favorite relatives…
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
Whenever there’s a mass murder or high profile killing involving guns, statistics are dusted off and updated. In 2011, there were 9,146 gun-related homicides in the U.S, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
By comparison, the gun death rate for the U.K., which bans handguns, was 173 (or .3 deaths per 100,000 people. In the U.S., a much larger country, the figure was 3 per 100,000). The U.S. has the highest number of gun owners in the world. A 2011 Gallup Poll revealed that 47 percent of Americans reported having guns…
STREETS OF KAMPALA
I have spent a little over a month in Kampala, Uganda and what grabs me about the people are their smiles. When Ugandans smile, it comes from the soul. They are always ready to talk and share. I’ve met grandmothers who’ve invited me into their home and kids who just want hugs and attention. I've played Mos Def for the local street boys and Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye for a sixty-something grandmother while we made a dance floor out of the kitchen, smiling and rocking to the beat…
REPRESENT: JAMEL SHABAZZ
For more than 30 years, Jamel Shabazz, HYCIDE’s creative director, has photographed whoever caught his eye on the streets of Brooklyn, his hometown, and later, all over the world. His indelible images document people who were largely absent from the photojournalism of their era. Fans of Shabazz know that throughout his career, he has reclaimed something precious that otherwise would have been lost…
GOD OF SMALL THINGS: NEMA ETEBAR
I grew up down South and I was born in Kentucky. My dad is Iranian and Muslim, my mom was Christian. Being down south people didn’t know if I was Mexican or what I was because I had darker skin. When I was younger I wanted to grow up somewhere else but now I appreciate it because I can see how people relate to each other. Those country boys who were maybe racist or judgmental towards me are like that because of their lack of experience and being exposed to other people…
TRANSFORMER
Gender and sexual identity can be a perplexing thing. We try to be flexible and still some definitions confine who we are and how we express ourselves. But the social dictates of gender are even more complex for Anu Ra. Although he was born as a woman and identifies as a transgendered man, Ra, 36, still strives to retain aspects of his femininity. He shares with HYCIDE his unique story of what it means to be masculine and feminine at the same time.
My coming into being transgender didn’t happen by me studying it…
THE ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
When we started HYCIDE last year, part of our goal was to feature artists and photographers whose work is global but still complements our mission— creating understanding for people who are often stereotyped or rendered invisible by mass media. That's the main focus of our one-year anniversary issue. There are photos from Newark, India, Puerto Rico, Africa, the Bronx and Brooklyn by artists such as Chester Higgins, Jr. of The New York Times, Henry Chalfant, a pioneering force in the graffiti art movement, and HYCIDE Creative Director Jamel Shabazz.…
COCAINE BALLET: STORYBOARD P
"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one." - Charles Horton Cooley
Storyboards are used by illustrators and animators to create motion pictures. Twenty-two year old street dancer, Saalim, does the same thing with dance. With an otherworldly anime-like style that’s futuristic and fascinating, he becomes the storyboard, mirroring a journey through love, pain and ambition, a style he calls “cocaine ballet.” His aliases, Story Basquiat, Storyboard P, and Profess-SOAR, like his art, are all metaphors. “We always in the lab cooking up shit,” he says. He’s brilliant, but being edified isn’t his thing. He just wants people to know the place from which his expression comes…
THE TOMBS
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. – Malcolm X
Even though some people know African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population (according to census data), they may not realize that Black men reportedly comprise 40.2 percent of all prison inmates. Most people assume those who are locked up are criminals, or weak-minded, and must have done something wrong. Filmmaker Jerry LaMothe is determined to show another point of view, one that is partially based on his own brief experience in jail…
CULTURE FREEDOM: THE EVOLUTION OF AFRO-PUNK
In 2003, James Spooner and Matthew Morgan released their documentary Afro-Punk which follows the lives of young people who subscribe to the punk lifestyle. It shows how the duality of living in the punk scene as a person of color can be lonely and disconnecting. But it also offers a chance for self expression.
Since then, Morgan and Spooner have built a collective force which produces music festivals, performances, films, literature and provides an online hub for people engaged in the punk lifestyle and other subcultures…
THE DIRTY
When I first touched down in the A, I was expecting the usual: pretty college girls, strippers, great weather and fun. But on my way to the hotel I found another reality. Right in the middle of downtown Atlanta was a place that looked just like “The Carter,” the crack complex from New Jack City. Except it wasn’t a complex it was a homeless shelter/ warehouse filled with crackheads and dope fiends. I hadn’t seen this many crackheads in one place since the late 80’s, and what was even more surprising was that the hustlers sold that shit hand to hand, breaking little pieces of crack off lager slabs while the police circled the block. (They do this so that if the police approach them they can just swallow the crack)…
LOVE IS ACTION
One year ago today, the Doomsday Campers said the world would end and we launched HYCIDE. But I’m not sure that people always understand the motivations behind this work. Occasionally I’ve heard people say HYCIDE is "poverty porn" and/or exploitative. To those people, I say this: We are not responsible for the circumstances that created gangs, violence, homelessness, poverty and misfortune. But it is our collective responsibility to try and do something about it. This is our call to action…
CARNIVAL DE RUA: SADNESS HAS NO END. HAPPINESS DOES.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to Rio De Janeiro for its annual carnival celebration. The ritual of carnival began as an ancient Greek celebration of Dionysus, the god of wine. The Roman’s called it “Saturnalia,’’ a day when slaves and masters switched clothes and got drunk. With the rise of the Catholic Church, it was associated with the days leading up to Lent, when followers gave up indulgences for 40 days. Like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, carnival is a spectacular, hedonistic celebration meant to be a release before days of self-denial. It comes from the Latin phrase “Carne Vale,’’ which means “Farewell to the Flesh.’’…
INTOLERANT
I stood on the steps of Newark City Hall about to address the crowd. I had been invited to speak about equality, peace and harmony for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and non-confirming people in the city. I opened with the topic of “justice.” But as I began my talk, one of the few brothers standing directly in front of me responded by calling me “faggot.” I went on to talk about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and what it might mean for us to show respect for the dignity of all people. Again, the brother in front of me responded by uttering the word “faggot.” I kept talking and so did he…
BLACK ASS MANIFESTO
The Black Woman’s ass commands great power and has historically been adored, scorned, sold, lusted for and objectified. The Black ass, the original African seat of humanity, is ancient and powerful, mystifying even. With my Black African ass up close, I aim to honor and salute its beauty and antiquity. I also aim to provoke thought, as the Black woman’s ass currently dominates newsstands with a plethora of Black booties, perched and poked out, shined up and paraded on magazine covers, hypnotizing passersby and dominating the window display…
BULLETPROOF LOVE
“The opposite of poverty is not wealth… In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.”
– Bryan Stevenson
What’s it like to raise Black boys amid the constant threat of death and violence, either in the suburbs, where they might be shot down, like Trayvon Martin, or in Newark, where a teen carrying earbuds in his pocket was assaulted after police mistook them for drugs? Thankfully, Trayvon's case has received attention from the community, the media and the FBI, but in most cases…
ME LOVE YOU LONG TIME
For more than a year, Edwin Ramoran traveled Southeast .Asia and the U.S., visiting galleries, nightclub dwellers and sex workers in search of artists for his new exhibition, "Me Love You Long Time," which runs through April 14 at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark. The show features themes of sexual identity and sexual commerce. As a former campus activist in college, assistant curator at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, director and curator of Longwood Arts Project in the Bronx, and director of exhibitions and programs at Aljira, Ramoran is no stranger to dialogues that engage the LGBTQ community in the arts…
HOTTENTOT VENUS: THE SARAH BAARTMAN STORY
Sarah Baartman was born in 1789. Working as a slave in Cape Town South Africa, she was ‘discovered’ by a British doctor, William Dunlop, who persuaded her to travel to England with him. He wanted to make money by putting Baartman on display as a “scientific curiosity".
She was a voluptuous woman with large breasts and unusually large buttocks and elongated labia, common among her people of Khoisan decent. In the early 1800s Europeans arrogantly obsessed with their own superiority…
REST IN POWER: THE NEWARK ANTI-VIOLENCE COALITION
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Since the summer of 2009, the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition has been holding rallies across the city of Newark calling for an end to the violence plaguing their community. Fed up with murders, empty promises, gentrification and negative images portraying Black and Latino people, the coalition is a collective of…
GHETTO GAGGERS: A NATION CAN RISE NO HIGHER THAN ITS WOMEN
One day, I Googled negative terms for Black women just to see what I’d find. One of the phrases was “ghetto bitch,” and to my surprise, a pornographic site called Ghetto Gaggers appeared. Out of curiosity, I went to the site, which flashed images of young Black women, all apparently in their late teens and early twenties. On the home page was a synopsis of Ghetto Gaggers videos, which feature middle-aged white men torturing the women through violence, sexual humiliation and racist mockery. The men took great delight in explaining how they degraded “hood rats.”…
QUIET WOMEN DON’T MAKE HISTORY
Developing a sense of identity can be challenging for young Nigerian women. They’re taught to know their place, and there are rigid expectations about which careers they should choose. Photographer Phillis Kwentoh, 25, rejects that. “Many people have told me that I should have been born a boy. I won’t hinder myself because of someone else’s opinion,’’ she says…
SUBWAY SHELTER
I knelt down beside the old man sleeping on the station floor. The ground was so cold, I felt the chill through my pants and immediately stood up. Yet somehow, despite the cold, the man remained dormant and completely undisturbed by my gentle poking and prodding.
It was 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and the subway stations from Times Square to Brooklyn were nearly empty of passengers. But as I wandered through the terminals, I found more and more people sleeping on benches…
(1)NE DROP
Do you know Blackness when you see it? I always thought I did. I thought I could spot a Black person from a mile away. I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana -- home to a distinct and preeminent group of folks who self-identify as “Creoles.” Creoles often pride themselves on their light skin and silky hair. A mix of African, Native American, French, and sometimes Spanish heritage, some Creoles are light enough to pass for White. We call them “passé a blanc.” Other Creoles make it a point to announce, if not perform, their imagined racial distinction -- not White, not Black, but Creole…
BT: THE LAST DAYS
Before and during the 2009 demolition of Baxter Terrace projects in Newark, NJ, photographer and HYCIDE editor-in-chief Akintola Hanif spent a year there documenting the lives of residents..
Baxter Terrace was the first housing project in Newark, built on Nesbitt and Orange Streets in 1941. It was named for James Baxter, principal of Newark’s first school for Black students during the Civil War. Until 1950, when Newark changed its policy, residents of Baxter Terrace and other city projects lived…
OPEN: AN EROTIC JOURNEY
When I first started writing erotica, I was sensitive about who I told. Maybe I was afraid of judgment. The reactions I receive from people are always interesting. Some people get excited and are very encouraging. Others look at me with a raised eyebrow like I’m a freak. Being the rebel rouser I can be sometimes, I enjoy challenging the notion and culture of respectability when it comes to sex…
CRAZYLAND: OCCUPY WALL STREET
Mainstream media has attempted to minimize the importance of the Occupy Wall
Street movement, focusing on “the crazies” at the demonstrations. Some of them are impossible to ignore.
“It's kinda hard to go the circus and not see the elephants,” says HYCIDE Editor in Chief, Akintola Hanif, who photographed these protestors at New York’s Zuccotti Park…
PINKSICK: THE INCREDULOUS MR. WONDERS
Having grown up listening to the aural science fiction of Parliament Funkadelic, while getting lost in the freaky album art by Pedro Bell, it doesn’t shock me when 38-year-old artist Shah Wonders declares, “I’m an alien from the planet Rizq. My mother was virgin who was impregnated by an alien. Even as a child, I told my mother that I had a UFO and could travel between dimensions.”…
RA UBASTI: FANGSMITH
Ra has been wearing fangs since high school and sometimes dresses like the Queen of the Damned, but she doesn’t consider herself a vampire. She’s not into drinking blood and she generally avoids vampire kitsch: “Twilight,’’ Bela Lugosi vehicles, HBO series about the undead. For Ra, an artist, wearing fangs is “spiritual,’’ a practice she associates with the Egyptian cat-headed goddess Sekhmet and West African tribes who prize sharp, filed teeth as a mark of beauty. As “New York’s Only Female Fangsmith,’’ Ra sells custom-fitted fangs made of dental acrylic to clients who include actors, blood-drinkers, Latino men from the Bronx and soccer moms…
I GAVE YOU POWER
I remember the first time I ever saw a pistol. I had to be like 9. My pops had a lil’ 32 he kept in his drawer. Ever since then I wanted one. Coming up watching cowboys and indians, mobster movies, cop shows, gangster videos, it all translated: guns equal power. Rachet, blamma, banga, slammer, burner--whatever you call ‘em, they’re everywhere. I think I got my first ratchet when I was 19. It was a lil' 32 revolver. Since then I’ve had my hands on more than a few of them thangs: 32 revolver, 32 semi auto, 380 auto, 9mm ruger, 44 bulldog, 38 snub and an old shotti…
JUST TO GET BY
Weed smokers don’t have to worry about getting arrested anymore, and they no longer have to be at the mercy of a dealer to deliver that sticky icky. Synthetic marijuana brands such as Spice, Strawberry Blond, K2 and Hulk, are being sold in head shops, tobacco stores, gas stations and bodegas across the country…
DERELICT
Back in the day that's what we used to call them, derelicts. Then while I was working on my book (still in progress) about homelessness, I learned that derelict also means lost or abandoned, which is their true circumstance. They weren't always homeless. Some of them are veterans, fathers, mothers, blue and white collar workers as well as victims of addiction, illness, abuse and lost hope…
YELLOW
My great friend, Trevor Franklyn Banton, a.k.a Yellowman, was shot and killed outside the Atmosphere nightclub in Newark, N.J. on August 11, 2010. He'd just left a going away party for our man Cory, who was leaving to do a seven-year bid the next day. Yellow's murder was the fourth in a string of homicides within 48 hours in Newark that summer, none of them related. Because of the unusually high death toll that week, Yellow's death was written up in a short Star-Ledger story. He was 32. His killer was never found…
WHO SHOT YA: THE LIFE AND ART OF ERNIE PANICCIOLI
Since returning to Brooklyn after being discharged from the Vietnam War in the early seventies, 61-year-old photographer Ernie Paniccioli is rarely without his camera. A Cree Native American, who relocated to Jersey City years ago, he's always ready to document the ever-changing world of music, art and politics.
Although Paniccioli is also a fiery public speaker who modeled himself after Malcolm X, he is most famous for his intimate images of wild styled hip-hop kids, which span three decades…
HOLIDAY
Holiday AKA HotShot Holly is a self-described chameleon, an adaptor, a hustler. His business card says “sex appeal specialist.." He says he's like Christmas, he brings excitement, That's why he's called Holiday. Many people are intrigued by Holly and his sense of style, but what they don’t know is, in order for him to survive, poverty was his greatest motivator.
“If you put me in the jungle, I’m gonna come out with a bear wrapped around me.”…
THE DEFINITION
The Definition’s gravity-defying workouts look like a cross between performance art, basic training and an Olympic high bar routine.
But the 15-member crew aren’t just showmen. For them, perfecting the body means developing the soul. "A lot of people look at advanced exercises as some staple of manhood or fitness and think of it as a competition,'' says Born Power, who founded The Definition in 2009. "They compromise their internal being for the sake of the external. But exercise is supposed to make your everyday existence better and enhance your quality of life.’’…
LONDON BURNING: BEFORE THE RIOTS
Photographer Robin Maddock couldn’t have predicted the riots that erupted in England last month, spreading from London to more than four other cities.
But he does know something about the festering anger and hopelessness that preceded it.
For three years, he photographed police raids in Hackney, a borough of London, where police and residents shared a mutual hatred of each other, he says, and where rioters set fire to cars and looted stores during the four-day wave of destruction that engulfed England.ions to violence…
THAT WAVE
Andrella Maringa Gaynor. My mom named me Muffy when I was born because I had fat cheeks. In high school, I played basketball and my best friend said I can’t stop won’t stop on the court, so he called me Muff Mommy. People also make up names with it, like Mufforama. They also called me Muffy while I was in the music game. I was signed to Warner Brothers South when I lived In Atlanta. I work in the fashion industry in Soho now…
EVERYDAY’S OUR
To me, ain’t no such thing as Father's Day. Everyday is Mother's & Father's Day and acknowledging yours should be a given.
I remember when my Sun first came to live with me. At the time he was 5 and I was 26, still a child in a man’s body. I remember his mother called me and told me she needed me to take him. I was scared to death, just knowing I didn’t posses the maternal instincts to raise a child. But much to my own disbelief, nothing could’ve been further from the truth…
BEAUTIFUL
Aiesha, 35, was slashed from her abdomen to her face when two female attackers broke into her Newark home, accusing her of sleeping with a man she'd never met. Her six-year-old son witnessed the attack.
It started when the door got kicked in. I was tying my son's shoes and the door hit me in the back. This woman busted in and said, "Are you fucking my husband?'' I said, "Who are you? Who is your husband?" I knocked my son out of the way and told him to lock himself in the bathroom and don't come out. The woman and the other female were hitting me. I thought they were just hitting me, but they were stabbing me…
LITTLE MONSTER
The irony of Lady Gaga's little monsters is that by being someone else, they can truly become themselves.
Mid-80s Madonna, who Gaga repeatedly references in her videos, had her army of Material Girls in crucifixes and bustiers.
But like other pop star wannabes, they were just imitators. For hardcore Gaga fans, both male and female, dressing as their idol means bravely baring their soul to a world intent upon crushing it…
RICHARD MAITLAND: STILL LIFE
Richard Maitland doesn’t take photos that scream for attention. Still, they’re intriguing. Most of his photos are not directed, constructed or posed. They have a street photography aesthetic that reveal an attention to environment and human nature. By capturing these images, he says, he learns about himself.
“I’m not so sure what I’m looking for when I’m shooting. I learn more when looking back at what I’ve photographed. It’s very much about self-discovery and people allowing me to have a space in their world and figuring out what’s going on in me,” explains 44 year-old Maitland, who was born in England and raised in Jamaica until he was 12…
BLACK HIROSHIMA: A TIME AFTER CRACK
Growing-up in Harlem during the pre-crack era of the 1970s, hip-hop mantras of hoes and hate wasn’t how we were raised. Our mothers and fathers, most who were real adults by the time they birthed us, some who had grown-up under segregation and/or Jim Crow, wanted a better tomorrow for their children. Hell, even cats that were number runners and hustlers reinforced the positive words of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as they encouraged neighborhood kids to stay in school and “grow-up to be somebody.”…
LOU GRAB: LUIS RIVERA JR.
Luis Rivera Jr. was a great friend to me and one of the stars of my still unedited documentary, The Bity (the projects my NJ family is from that I frequented as a child). Louie (as he was more affectionately known) was one of the first strangers I met that welcomed me into their personal lives almost as if he knew and understood my purpose before I did. Before that, most of my subjects were family and friends. But from the day we met, Louie was extremely open and willing to allow me into his world…
THE AGGRESSIVES
An ‘a.g.’ or ‘aggressive’ is a masculine lesbian, a term synonymous with ‘butch’ or ‘stud.’
"My cousin is almost in her 70s and she's gay, and that's a term she would use. I remember hearing that term growing up,'' says Noelle Lorraine Williams, 35, a bisexual Black activist and artist, who explores gender roles in her work. "'Aggressive' means you're not trying to pass yourself off as a man. You're a woman, but you have this dialogue with masculinity.''…
HI, WE’RE F.U.N.
F.U.N. is a skateboard crew of middle schoolers and freshmen from suburban Essex County. To join, members have to do a “six-stair’’ and skate together at least three times a week unless “you’re hurt or you have family stuff.’’ They don’t really like to explain what F.U.N. stands for. Perhaps because it’s an acronym for "Fuck U Niggas.” “Some people think it’s racist, but we’re not trying to be racist,’’ they insist. The dozen or so members of F.U.N are mostly white. A few are Asian and one is a dark-skinned Dominican. Other members aren’t sure if he considers himself Black. Anyway, he doesn’t mind the name, they say (he wasn’t around for the interview)…
THE LAST DAYS: THE DOOMSDAY CAMPERS
May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day, according to a group of Christians known as the Doomsday Campers. For months the church members have been traveling across the United States and other parts of the world with a warning. The group believes 2011 is the year of the Rapture, when a massive earthquake will take place and all true believers will finally go to heaven. All non-believers will be left behind to suffer 153 days of ‘death and horror’ before the world allegedly ends on October 21…
FOREVER BEGINS: TAHA CLAYTON
Dressed in black boots, jeans and an applejack hat, Toronto native Taha Clayton guides me up the dusty staircase that leads to his art studio in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. A former crack house, he is currently renovating the space alongside fellow artist and girlfriend Manivone. Entering the room, one can feel the creative energy that has replaced the stench of rock cocaine.
After popping a few cans of Bud and setting up a Dilla soundtrack on the computer, Taha modestly shows me a few of his canvases. “I’ve lived in New York for four years, but I haven’t shown my work much,” he confesses…