Join us for the launch of our newest exhibition, Rhythm, Bass & Place: Through the Lens featuring the works of photography documentarians, Joe Conzo Jr. & Malik Yusef Cumbo who have captured the essence and elements of Black music as it has evolved between the 1970s - 2000s.
Dancing in the Streets South Bronx 1980 by Joe Conzo Jr.
Through black and white photographs, they’ve captured multiple genres of music and have collectively helped us see how musical styles were created in New York City’s Diasporic communities. From portrait to photojournalism, Rhythm, Bass and Place: Through the Lens is a testament of a social movement, a cultural renaissance and a communally crafted sound experience that reverberates throughout the world.
This exhibition is organized during a special time, during the global celebration of Hip-Hop’s 50th anniversary, a culture and genre born of reggae, jazz, salsa, merengue, soul, funk and disco.
These photographers created a visual culture that amplifies the sounds our people make when gathered in neighborhoods across nations.
There is no cost to attend!
Space for this event is limited, please help us to plan accordingly by registering in advance.
Registration does not guarantee entry.
Tribe Called Quest / Captured on the set of “Stressed Out” Music Video. / Photo Shoot for Historical Documentation. Circa 1996, New York City 35mm film Black and White Film by Malik Yusef Cumbo
Rhythm, Bass and Place: Through the Lens will be on display March 17 - June 24, 2023 at the CCCADI Firehouse (120 E. 125th Street, NY, NY 10035) during the following gallery hours:
Thursdays and Fridays 3 - 7 p.m.
Saturdays 12 - 4 p.m.
Closed Mar 24, 2023
Featured Artists:
Joe Conzo Jr.
The New York Times heralded Joe Conzo Jr. as “The Man Who Took Hip-Hop’s Baby Pictures.” The long and perilous journey of his photographic images had finally captured the gaze of mainstream America.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Mr. Conzo acquired a passion for photography as a young boy attending the Agnes Russell School on the campus of Columbia University. He continued his formal artistic education at the School of Visual Arts (NYC). He also received certification as a Combat Medic. Later, he would join the New York Fire Department as an Emergency Medical Technician. It was his role as an EMT that delivered him to the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001.
All the while, he continued his photography and published a seminal book on Hip-Hop culture that has received worldwide acclaim — “Born In The Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop” (2007). In 2008, this entire collection of images became part of a permanent archive housed at Cornell University. The digitization of over 10,000 of Mr. Conzo’s film images has already begun — progress can be viewed at the Cornell University Library’s website. This collection is regarded by genre experts and academia as an important lens into the roots of Hip-Hop culture, the Urban NYC landscape of the 70s and 80s, and an integral source for any serious discourse on the movement.
Malik Yusef Cumbo
Malik Yusef Cumbo is a Photographer / Artist / Filmmaker / Producer. His first love is the art of photography, and his first creative influence was his mother, Fikisha Cumbo, a great photojournalist. He would study her photographs of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, amongst many other music makers, and he made portraits of her when she needed one for publicity. After his mother got him a summer job with a local photographer named Larry Brown as Brown’s film and print processor, Malik fell in love with the craft.
Malik bought tons of magazines and books to study all the greats like Van Der Zee, Parks, Watson, Ritts, Leibovitz, and many others that were popular at the time. He set up a dark room in his bedroom and was quickly possessed by the art form. Inspired by this engulfing passion, he attended the School of Visual Arts for photography where he would dive into the study of working in a designated amount of space and making a Black and White print from it. He thought color had its place, but B&W made a photograph something else. Line, shape and form became more available to his senses, and a new dimension opened up for him.
Surrounded by a multitude of creatives at this time, moving in the same party scene, Malik befriended and photographed many of them who happened to be recording artists, and great visual artists. He would start working with many noted record companies and publishing houses as an event photographer and shooting stills on music videos. Later, he moved into portraiture, magazine features, fashion spreads, album covers, and multimedia applications.
He has extended his work as a photographer, currently working on photo document of Black Creatives, something that he feels is important to archive. “One hundred years from now, their names and faces should be known and presented as a creative document”.
Malik opened his first studio in D.U.M.B.O. in the early 90s, a few years later another studio in Tribeca, NY. His newest studio in Brooklyn, NY called ThoughtFormZ is a multimedia studio, focusing on photography, film, and sound design to create projects that are fitted for the new era of education and entertainment.
Curator:
Lynnée Denise
Lynnée Denise was shaped as a scholar and a DJ by her parent’s record collection. She is an artist, writer, and DJ whose work reflects on underground cultural movements, the 1980s, migration studies, theories of escape, and electronic music of the African Diaspora. Denise coined the phrase "DJ Scholarship" to reposition the role of the DJ from a party purveyor to an archivist, cultural custodian, and information specialist. Her bylines have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Black Scholar Journal, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and the Oprah Daily. Her writing is also part of anthologies including Women Who Rock, and Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity.
In 2020, Lynnée Denise was invited to be an Artist in Residence at the Stanford University Institute for Diversity in the Arts, and she was invited to be the Sterling Brown '22 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. She is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths University of London.
Rhythm, Bass and Place: Connections and Reflections on Music of the African Diaspora
This exhibition is part of CCCADI’s five-month-long series that celebrates the migration and creative evolution of Black music by highlighting the routes of rhythms and sound culture in a Diasporic context. Rhythm, Bass and Place: Connections and Reflections on Music of the African Diaspora constructs a living archive through engaging stories from neighborhoods, stages, studios and dance floors that shaped the sonic landscape in select U.S., U.K. and Caribbean cities over the last three decades.
All events may be subject to change.