Long Live King Kobe

This book is an intimate portrait of grief, a chronicle that charts the devastation visited upon a large, multi-generational family in the wake of the senseless, random murder of twenty-one-year-old Tyler Kobe Nichols on December 23, 2020.

With the cooperation and full participation of the Nichols-Chambers family, photographer Spencer Ostrander was granted privileged access to the household. Over the course of the next several months, he conducted one-on-one interviews with each member of that household along with Tyler's closest friends and, in the natural light of those settings, compiled a large dossier of photographic portraits of each person involved in the story.

The result is an astonishing ensemble of pictures and words that pierces through the cold statistics we use to talk about the wave of street violence spreading across the country to focus on one person, one family, one lost life, and transform the numbers into vivid, aching human reality.

Paul Auster is the author of Burning Boy, 4 3 2 1, Sunset Park, The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace, Winter Journal, The invention of Solitude and the New York Trilogy among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Liturature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Etranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and The Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. He has also been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the Pen/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Spencer Ostrander is a photographer based in Brooklyn. He was born in Seattle, Washington in 1984. The year he turned 21 several people close to him died, one after the other, and he realized he had no tangible images of them to fix in his memory. He began to think about the meaning of photographs. While studying psychology in San Francisco, Ostrander received a Nikkormat 35mm as a gift from a family friend and his interest in the art became an active obsession. He transferred to Parsons School of Design in New York City, from which he graduated in 2010. He went on to assist freelance for a variety of portrait and documentary photographers. Although he abandoned the formal study of psychology, Ostrander’s work is deeply informed by a desire to observe closely, to forge human connections, and to intimately understand the world around him. He has recently completed two other books, Time Square in the Rain and Bloodbath Nation (in collaboration with Paul Auster). Sherma Chambers was born on the Island of St, Vincent. She immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 and has lived in Brooklyn ever since. Sherma is the mother of three sons, Shomari, 29, Shayne, 24, and Tyler, who was murdered at age 21 on December 23, 2020. Following Tyler’s death, she became the founder and director of Long Live King Kobe, a New York State nonprofit organization. The goals of LLKK are to support the families and friends of victims of violence and to fund outreach programs for troubled youth.