Sue Kwon: Street Level: New York Photographs 1987-2007

by Hilton Als (Introduction), Sue Kwon (Photographer)

Street Level collects 20 years of documentary and commercial photography by esteemed New York photographer Sue Kwon. Her subjects include some of Hip Hop's finest, such as the Beastie Boys, Biggie Smalls and the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as portraits and street scenes from New York's most charismatic neighborhoods--Little Italy, Chinatown, Coney Island, the Lower East Side and a pre-Guiliani Times Square. These black-and-white images, characterized by an evident fondness for the lives they depict, are populated with recruits from all realms and occasions, from shoe-shiners to inmates at the Rahway State Prison to newlyweds and strippers between sets at the infamous Sue's Rendezvous. As direct and candid as their subjects, Sue Kwon's photographs share a kinship with those of the legendary New York documentary photographer Helen Levitt. Although Kwon is well known in the Hip Hop world, this is the first complete monograph to survey her work.

Sue Kwon began her career at the Village Voice , shooting subjects that ranged from N.W.A. to Covenant House runaways to underground Jamaican nightclubs in Queens. She went on to shoot primarily Hip Hop artists for record labels like Def Jam, Sony and Loud Records. While much of her current work centers on her own projects, she still photographs campaigns for companies such as Burton Snowboards, Gravis and A Bathing Ape. Kwon lives and works in New York City.

Genres: Art, Photography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Hilton Als is an American writer and theater critic who writes for The New Yorker magazine. Previously, he had been a staff writer for The Village Voice and editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.

His 1996 book The Women focuses on his mother, who raised him in Brooklyn, Dorothy Dean, and Owen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als. In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", a Barbadian term for homosexuals.

Als's 2013 book 'White Girls' continued to explore race, gender, identity in a series of essays about everything from the AIDS epidemic to Richard Pryor's life and work.

In 2000, Als received a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing and the 2002–03 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 2004 he won the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, which provided him half a year of free working and studying in Berlin.

Als has taught at Smith College, Wesleyan, and Yale University, and his work has also appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and the New York Review of Books.

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best representations of Hip-Hop, as it existed in the 90's (and as it will almost certainly never be again). Sue Kwon's photography is photography that is unabashed, beautiful, dark and depressing all at once. If you have any connection to Hip-Hop culture, or if you simply love black and white photography, you should own a copy of this book.