Conrad McRae

Ari Marcopoulos's photographs of the Conrad McRae Youth League Tournament, played at Dean Street Playground in Brooklyn, fill this 816-page paperback from Roma Publications.

Marcopoulos photographed the tournament between 2014 and 2019. It began in 2000 in memory of the basketball player Conrad Bastien McRae (1971-2000), and it takes players from age six up, including some of the best high school players in the New York area. The book mixes individual and group portraits with pictures of the games, and it includes staff and spectators. The tournament jersey, with its small Jumpman logo borrowed from Michael Jordan, is the recurring motif. Andrea Lissoni and Damani McNeil contribute texts, and Roger Willems designed the book, published in 2020.

Marcopoulos was born in Amsterdam in 1957 and moved to New York in 1980. He worked as a printing assistant to Andy Warhol and then under Irving Penn, and he became part of the downtown art scene. He photographed hip-hop artists including the Beastie Boys, Rakim and Public Enemy, and skateboarders at the Banks spot under the Brooklyn Bridge. His work has been in the Whitney Biennial and in solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 and the Berkeley Art Museum.