Ricky Powell

Ricky Powell (born November 20, 1961) is an American photographer. He is the author of four books.

Born and raised in New York City, Powell is a photographer who specializes in the environmental portrait. He graduated with an AA in Liberal Arts from LaGuardia Community College and a B.S. in Physical Education from Hunter College. Though Powell initially rose to fame because of his relationship with the Beastie Boys, he is now well known for his intimate photographs that have been featured in The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News (New York), The Village Voice, TIME, Newsweek, VIBE, The Source, Rolling Stone, and many other publications.

Powell’s photographs focus on the organic New Yorker. His photographs simultaneously convey intimacy and detachment, as they provide a unique lens through which the viewer can analyze the mundane. Powell considers the relationship between the photographer and the photograph to be “a chemical connection of some sort”. The connection between Powell and his camera is only further stimulated by Greenwich Village, where he currently resides. As the intrinsic qualities of the photograph have changed since Powell began capturing his moments, so have the subjects; he is now more likely to “photograph strangers in his Greenwich Village neighborhood than multiplatinum hip-hop acts and Downtown art stars”.

Powell originally saw photography as a purple elephant; taking pictures of family and friends at random. But in 1985, when a girlfriend “played [Powell] like a soggy cannoli”, as he described in an interview with The New Yorker, he took the camera she had left at his place and vowed that “She would be mad sorry she dissed [him] like this”.

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