Andre D. Wagner: New City, Old Blues: The Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize

Documenting Bushwick’s changing streets with an analog camera, Wagner joins a lineage of American street photographers addressing questions of race, class and identityBrooklyn-based photographer Andre D. Wagner (born 1983) has created some of the most iconic portraits of Black celebrities in recent memory―Lewis Hamilton officially joining Ferrari; Beyoncé on the cover of Essence; Tramell Tillman for the New York Times; and Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s official promotional image for the Grand National Tour. Before these commissions, he had spent more than a decade exploring and documenting New York City street life, with a particular focus on Bushwick’s changing landscape. A resident of the neighborhood since 2011, Wagner captures the joys and hardships of Black life in the city. This publication, representing the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize, charts Bushwick’s changing landscape as seen through Wagner’s lens between 2014 and 2024. It also includes an essay by the acclaimed writer Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us and A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. Read more