Even by New York standards, Joe Conzo has had a remarkable journey, filled with sadness and joy. He helped document the birth of hip hop in the Bronx with his photographs, and then fell on hard times. But thanks to his mother and a friend, those photos were rediscovered, and Conzo's dreams of success came true. NY1's Budd Mishkin filed the following One on 1 profile.
Not many of us can say a hobby in high school changed our lives 30 years later. Joe Conzo can.
He's traveled the world, thanks to pictures he took growing up in the South Bronx. Pictures that were forgotten and eventually rediscovered.
Joe Conzo has experienced a lot in his 53 years. He's a survivor of 9/11 and drug addiction. Conzo is also a Fire Department EMT and vice president of the union representing them.
But for any afficianado of hip-hop history, Joe Conzo is known primarily as the photographer who was there at the very beginning.
"My two high school schoolmates, Tony Tone and Easy A.D. — 'cause of them I got invited to take pictures of their group that they were putting together, started my career in hip-hop."
The group was the Cold Crush Brothers, respected as pioneers of hip hop. Wherever they went, Conzo followed with his camera.
"It wasn't about the record deal," Conzo said. "It wasn't about the gold chains, it was about the next jam, the next Friday night school jam. Who is coming to the school gymnasium to perform? And it was just a beautiful. And me with my camera, I had all access. Joe's part of the band."
At his apartment in the Norwood section of the Bronx, Conzo has a collection of old cameras.
"This is the actual model, Minolta SOT 21, that I took the majority of my black and white images," he says, pointing them out.
Conzo took all types of photographs.
"I have a lot of images of firefighters putting out fires, which was so common, they were so common in our neighborhood that my mother used to offer them coffee when they walked up the fire escape when they put out a fire in the building next door. "
When Paul Newman came to the neighborhood to film the movie Fort Apache The Bronx, residents protested. One day during filming, Conzo wandered over with his camera.
"All of a sudden, Paul Newman turns around, gives me that death look and a film crew chased me off the set," he said. "But this was the first picture I ever had published. The New York Post published it a few weeks later."
He also got to photograph the friends of his father, Joe Conzo, Sr., great Latin musicians, especially Tito Puente.
But Conzo's greatest impact is in the photographs taken long before hip-hop was performed in arenas and stadiums around the world.
"We used either school gymnasiums or local skating rinks, cause skating was real popular back then," Conzo said. "So on a Friday or Saturday night they would throw a jam there, it wasn't called hip-hop, but a jam."
But shortly after high school, he gave up photography.
And when his grandmother died in 1984, he developed a serious drug problem.
She was one of his greatest influences — Dr. Evelina Antonetty, the so called "Hell Lady of The Bronx" who along with Conzo's mother Lorraine Montenegro, founded the community group United Bronx Parents.
"I turned to drugs to mask that feeling," he said. "I lost my job, became homeless, pretty much lost everything."
"There were moments when I threw up my hands and said God please take me, 'cause I'm tired. But there always that little hope."
According to Conzo there was another reason for his addiction. He says he was abused by members of his extended family.
"There was being physical abuse as a child, being sexually molested as a child, you know dealing with demons like those."
"And those were issues that I had to deal with and those were issues that I dealt with in therapy, in counseling, you know, as an older person and letting go."
He got arrested, spent 24 hours in central booking and decided to get clean. A judge remanded him to rehab for 18 months.
Conzo says he's been sober since 1991. He became an EMT. On 9/11, he was in his ambulance in the Bronx when the first plane hit.
He headed downtown with his partner and was at the Marriott next to the World Trade Center evacuating people when the first tower fell.
"I ran into the Marriott under a table. They tried to run across the street. I got buried in the Marriott had to dig myself out."
"And lucky for us one of the walls of the Marriott was collapsed and we were able to climb out into the street. Street was a ghost town, everybody was gone, gone."
"I did two years of therapy because I had survivor's guilt. What came out of that therapy was basically it wasn't your time to go, Joe. Wasn't your time to go."
Not long after, photographer Henry Chalfant called Conzo to ask about one of his old photographs. Conzo hadn't kept the pictures and the negatives.
Fortunately, his mother did.
"The way she tells the story, she had lost me to drugs," Conzo said. "I was dealing with that and being homeless, and she held on to whatever she could, which were my black and white negatives."
His friend Adrian Harris -- Easy A.D. from the Cold Crush Brothers -- had also held onto the old images. So when Johan Kugelberg, a Swedish art and hip-hop enthusiast called Conzo, he was ready.
"I went downtown, met him, hoping to sell some images, and like said 'No, I love your pictures. they should be in a book, they should be in an exhibition traveling the world.' I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ok, ok. Five years later, book came out and I traveled the world."
It's been quite a journey.
"I was just a chubby little kid with an Angela Davis afro, that walked around with a camera."
Conzo now lives with his wife and daughter, and has an adult son who lives in Rhode Island.
"When I pray at night, I just ask for space between those rough patches, so I can deal with them, simple, simple, and this too shall pass."
He has dreams of retiring to a beach in Barcelona. But he'll always be a Bronx guy.
His early pictures, thousands of them now digitized at Cornell University, have made the words in his South Bronx high school yearbook a reality.
"Become a world-renowned photographer. I want to take the kinds of photos that will make heads turn and make people stop dead in their tracks. The kind of photographs that will show the beauty in life and the softness of women, so watch out Life Magazine, Playboy, UPI, because I'm on my way to the top."
"It took thirty years for my dreams to come true but I can honestly say they've come true."