Legendary Hip-Hop Photographer Ricky Powell Gets His Own Documentary

There is perhaps no photographer who captured the Eighties and Nineties hip-hop scenes in New York better than Ricky Powell.

Known best for his working relationship with the Beastie Boys, Powell was a prolific shooter who captured iconic images of Run-DMC, Madonna, Eric B and Rakim, Laurence Fishburne, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Sofia Coppola, Vin Diesel and other icons of the downtown Manhattan scene for the better part of a decade. His photographs ran in the New York Times, the Village Voice and this very magazine, among others.

Now, the camera turns on him: Powell will be the subject of a new documentary, Ricky Powell: The Individualist, set to premiere at the We Are One Global Film Festival on Saturday, May 30th at 5:30 p.m. ET. Directed by Josh Swade, the film features archival photographs and footage shot by Powell himself along with interviews with Powell and some of his most well-known subjects.

The We Are One Global Film Festival is a 10-day digital event to be held exclusively on YouTube, premiering films that can’t be shown in theaters at the moment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Produced and organized by Tribeca Enterprises, the event will begin on May 29th and is a joint collaboration between some of the world’s largest film festivals — including Cannes, Berlin and Venice — that have been canceled this year due to the coronavirus.