Souls Against the Concrete

by Khalik Allah

Overview

Khalik Allāh is a New York-based photographer and filmmaker whose work has been described as “street opera,” simultaneously penetrative, hauntingly beautiful, and visceral. His photography has been acclaimed by the New York Times, TIME Light Box, the New Yorker, the Guardian, the Village Voice, the BBC, and the Boston Globe. Since 2012, Allāh has been photographing people who frequent the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem. Shooting film at night with only the light pouring from storefront windows, street lights, cars, and flashing ambulances, he captures raw and intimate portraits of “souls against the concrete.”

This volume presents a gallery of 105 portraits created with a Nikon F2 35mm camera and a photography predicated on reality. Inviting viewers to look deeply into the faces of people living amid poverty, drug addiction, and police brutality, but also leading everyday lives, Allāh seeks to dispel fears, capture human dignity, and bring clarity to a world that outsiders rarely visit. This nuanced portrayal of nocturnal urban life offers a powerful and rare glimpse into the enduring spirit of a slowly gentrifying Harlem street corner and the great legacies of black history that live there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477313145
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	11/04/2017
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	12.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Khalik Allāh is a New York–based filmmaker and photographer. His award-winning documentary film Field Niggas, whose name was inspired by Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots” speech, chronicles summer nights on the corner of 125th and Lexington Avenue in the heart of Harlem. Allāh’s eye for daring documentary portraiture and bold aesthetics takes us into a world in which beauty, bleakness, and raw spirit all intersect. From his early photographs of Wu-Tang Clan to his cinematography for Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, Allāh’s profoundly personal work goes beyond street photography to delve deep into the visual stream of consciousness that is Harlem.

Editorial Reviews

…a panorama of human emotion: sadness, passion, bewilderment, pride, suspicion, amusement, exhaustion—all the faces of the night.

The New York Times Book Review - Luc Sante

It is easy to walk through a city not making eye contact, but for photographer Khalik Allāh this contact is essential. He sees each individual he photographs. And his photographs in turn allow us to see them, to acknowledge who we might ignore, to look through Allāh’s eye and into theirs, and to recognize them as individuals. This is the power of Allāh’s work. . . Here, he gives us a deeper sense of people as people, to share and enlighten, even when the message may not be clean or easy.

L’Oeil de la Photographie

"It is easy to walk through a city not making eye contact, but for photographer Khalik Allah this contact is essential. He sees each individual he photographs. And his photographs in turn allow us to see them, to acknowledge who we might ignore, to look through Allah’s eye and into theirs, and to recognize them as individuals. This is the power of Allah’s work. . . Here, he gives us a deeper sense of people as people, to share and enlighten, even when the message may not be clean or easy."

L'Oeil de la Photographie