Book Launch: I Looked Into the Sun by Taiye Godbody in conversation with Jamel Shabazz

Book Launch: I Looked Into the Sun by Taiye Godbody in conversation with Jamel Shabazz

Friday Jul 24, 2026
7:00 pm - 9:30 pm

POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY 11201

Get Tickets Here!

 

I Looked Into the Sun is Taiye Godbody’s debut — a hardcover monograph, bound in full-grain leather. The work inside moves across portraiture, concept, and documentary. These images are drawn from a practice shaped by diasporic experience, spiritual inquiry, and a reverence for light.

Spanning the full arc of work that brought Taiye Godbody to this moment, and accompanied by an exclusive interview with the artist, this is a first edition in every sense of the phrase.

About the Author. 

Taiye Godbody is a Brooklyn based creative leader and storyteller hailing from Ethiopia, Benin and Jamaica. His rich intercultural fluency and sharp instinct for composition creates a visual language entirely his own. Through his signature striking light and thoughtful concepts, he empowers his subjects to speak back to the viewer, working to unite Diasporic perspectives.
His work has taken him from collaborations with Disney and Adidas to features in publications like VOGUE, Essence, The Washington Post, Billboard and Complex, while also mounting exhibitions from New York City to Berlin, to Accra.

 

 

 

 

About the Moderator.

 

Jamel Shabazz is best known for his iconic images of New York City during the 1980s and 1990s. A documentary, fashion, and street photographer, he has also authored numerous books, including the monographs Back in the Days and A Time Before Crack. His photographs have been exhibited worldwide, and his work is housed within the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; and the Dean Collection, among others. Over the years, Shabazz has taught documentary photography to young students at the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Expanding the Walls project, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Teen Curators program, and the Bronx Museum’s Teen Council. He was the 2022 awardee of the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize, and the 2023 recipient of the Lucie Foundation Award for his achievement in documentary photography. His goal as an artist is to contribute to the preservation of world history and culture.