Living a Dream

The Bene Taschen Gallery presents the immersive exhibition HIP HOP – Living a Dream with works by Jamel Shabazz, Joseph Rodriguez, and Gregory Bojorquez – offering highly diverse insights into the development and popularisation of American Hip Hop culture.

Between the early 1980s and the 2000s, Shabazz (b. 1960), Rodriguez (b. 1951), and Bojorquez (b. 1972) became chroniclers of a lifestyle whose combination of music, graffiti, breakdancing and fashion turned into a global phenomenon – emerging from the streets of New York, spreading to Los Angeles and the South of the US, on to Europe and across the entire world. The exhibition is accompanied by soundscapes, interviews and memorabilia.

Just like Hip Hop itself, the three American photographers have achieved international acclaim and an audience far beyond the USA. Jamel Shabazz is represented in the collections of international institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation (Germany), the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the J. Paul Getty Museum (L.A.), or New York’s Gordon Parks Foundation. Gregory Bojorquez work has been showcased at the Vincent Price Art Museum (L.A.) and in international exhibitions in Los Angeles, Cologne and Berlin (amongst others), while Joseph Rodriguez’s images are featured in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum, the International Center of Photography, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, as well as the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Albertina in Vienna.