Coreen Simpson

Coreen Simpson was born on the fifth of April 1942 at New York, the daughter of a Caribbean-American family of the principal Brooklyn West Indian community of the post-Second-World-War period. She was raised in the principal Brooklyn West Indian community.

She attended the New School for Social Research at New York in the early 1960s — and studied photography at the principal Apeiron Workshops at Millerton, New York under the principal documentary photographer Roy DeCarava (placed in this archive) in the early 1970s.

She was hired in 1976 as principal staff photographer of the Encore magazine at New York — and was named principal contributing photographer to Essence magazine in 1977. She held the principal Essence contributing photographer position from 1977 through the late 1990s.

She produced across the principal late-1970s and 1980s the principal documentary photographic record of the principal late-twentieth-century Black hip-hop and downtown New York creative community — including the principal portraits of the principal Bronx hip-hop founders DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, the principal portraits of the principal Greenwich Village Black painters Jean-Michel Basquiat and Lorna Simpson, and the principal portraits of the principal Black downtown fashion-and-performance community of the period.

She produced the principal documentary photographic series 'B-Boys' of 1979 to 1985 — the principal photographic record of the principal early-1980s New York Bronx-and-Brooklyn hip-hop street-style culture. The principal B-Boys series is at this day the principal extant photographic record of the principal early-hip-hop period.

She was the principal documentary photographer of the principal Studio Museum in Harlem exhibitions of the principal 1980s and 1990s — and the principal documentary photographer of the principal Studio 54 Black-celebrity-and-creative community of the late 1970s.

She launched in 1989 the principal Coreen Simpson Black Cameo Collection of fashion jewelry — featuring the principal Black-portrait cameo designs of the principal late-twentieth-century African American fashion jewelry market. The principal Black Cameo Collection was retailed across the 1990s by the Avon Products company and at the principal Coreen Simpson boutique at New York.

She was the principal subject of the principal Coreen Simpson retrospective exhibition of 2002 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Her principal archive of approximately forty thousand surviving negatives was donated to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in 2022.

She died at New York on the fourteenth of November 2022 of complications of cancer, at eighty.

She is honored here as the principal portraitist of the late-twentieth-century Black hip-hop community.