Adam Yauch Park is a peaceful oasis in Brooklyn under a highway on-ramp, kids play basketball and ride their scooters in the sunshine. Adam Yauch aka MCA, grew up here, playing in this playground and learning to ride his bike. The formerly named Palmetto Playground was renamed Adam Yauch Park to mark the one-year anniversary of his passing on May 4th.
“Born and bred in Brooklyn the U.S.A./
They call me Adam Yauch but I’m M.C.A.”
“No Sleep Til Brooklyn,” The Beastie Boys
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May 18th, 2013
I visited artist Hassan Hajjaj at his store in East London (above : Hassan (R) with his ‘bruvva’(L). Born in Morocco he moved to London in 1975, he seems to know everyone, the store is buzzing with locals, musicians, artists dropping by for a chat and some tea.
Hassan is working on a photography project to do with identity. He says “I noticed that a lot of my friends in London come from places with very distinct traditional costumes that they wear for special occasions. When I’m in Morocco, I’ll wear a djellaba, but when I come back to London I wear Western clothes. When you see the different costumes side by side, you can really see the cultural differences. ”
I love his work, beautiful images and video footage shot on the streets in London and Morocco, very real and from the heart.
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May 18th, 2013
The punk show ‘Chaos to Couture’ at the Metropolitan Museum inspired New York Magazine to interview me about my experiences back in the seventies London punk days.
Punk brought an anti-establishment raw freshness to music, art and style. It was about change, the idea that people should question authority and do it for themselves. Coming from an art school background. I loved punk, 2 Tone, reggae. rockabilly, I liked soul music. I liked all kinds of music. At that time in England, the economy was really bad and the whole “No Future Punk” thing was going on. Kids would come out of school and they couldn’t get jobs. People were rebelling against that. To me, punk was an attitude, a life style, that changed everything in the UK.
FYI In 1994 London’s Victoria & Albert Museum had an exhibition called ‘Streetstyle: from sidewalk to catwalk’ which explored a similar theme to the Met show – they displayed a twelve foot high print of my photo of the Islington Twins at the entrance – the exhibition unpretentiously showed how street style, music and youth culture affect the world.
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May 4th, 2013
I will be teaching my ‘Youth Culture’ Portrait & Documentary Photography’ summer class again at ICP in July. Classes will be on Wednesday afternoons July 10 through August 7.
This year I taught a ‘Youth Culture’ workshop with Stella Kramer in Caracas- it made the New Yorker blog – we did 3 days of 12 hour classes – work !! the students took some great photographs.
Below is a photograph of a group of Mods at a festival in Scotland that I shot for the iconic style and culture magazine The Face back in the UK Punk days.
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April 24th, 2013
LL Cool J (Ladies Love Cool James) is releasing a new album ‘Authentic’ at the end of this month.
I took his first promo photograph (below) back in 1985. The then seventeen year old LL Cool J seemed shy when he arrived in my downtown studio with Bill Adler, the PR for Def Jam ( keeper of the great hiphop ‘Adler ‘archives) carrying a huge boom box . Two years, and many hits, later I photographed him again on the street (above) with Cut Creator, E Love and B-Rock for the British music weekly Melody Maker. He was still rocking the Kangol with bigger gold chains and more confidence. The New York Times claimed he radiated ” the charisma of the young Muhammad Ali”
These days he is one of hip hop’s great success stories, a movie actor and star of the TV series ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’. Looking forward to seeing the NY show at Roseland.
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April 21st, 2013
Burton Snowboards has a new collaboration with hip-hop artists Salt-N-Pepa introducing a special-edition 2014 Burton Lip-Stick board available to the public next fall. The board was developed with Lifebeat, a nonprofit HIV/AIDS prevention organization that Salt-N-Pepa has been involved with since the early ’90s. The Burton creative team and Lifebeat came to my studio about six months ago to choose a photo for the board.
Sandy “Pepa” Denton says : “Burton and Lifebeat wanted to represent that particular moment in the hip-hop era, and out of all the pictures to choose from, when they picked this one I had to agree it was the best. When you think of Salt-N-Pepa, you remember this picture, these jackets. They called it the “Push It” jacket! If someone’s dressed up as Salt-N-Pepa for Halloween, this is what they’re dressed up like.
This was our take on that gold-chain-and-door-knocker-earrings b-boy stance era. It’s a great photo by Janette Beckman, and Play, from Kid ‘n Play, actually designed these jackets for us. … So there’s a lot of stories and a lot of memories behind that photo for us. Those were good times. The ’80s rocked!”
Salt-N-Pepa you rock!
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March 25th, 2013
My shot of Milo Johnson is on the cover of the latest Jocks & Nerds magazine. First off I happen to think Jocks & Nerds is the best magazine covering style, music, attitude, culture out there today. I’ve been working for them for over a year now – the mag is beautifully designed, lots of black and white photography and in a truly arcane way – well you can’t buy it anywhere – it is a free quarterly only available in specialist stores like Paul Smith in London.
And then there is the legendary Milo Johnson, with whom I spent a really nice afternoon taking photos, wandering around his Harlem neighborhood, talking about music, Bristol, London, New York,Tokyo, magazines, photos, and other good things. A few days later he dropped off some music for me : his current CD ‘Return of the Savage’ in my opinion irresistible grooves, ‘The Wild Bunch’ great hip hop mixes, ‘Live at the Cat Club 1979′, and ‘Suntoucher’ are all on heavy rotation on my ‘jukebox’.
Have to say I love photographing people on the streets of NY – there is always so much going on. Standing under the overpass for the 1 train, at 125th street avoiding trucks, speeding cop cars and taxis, the odd passerby making a comment, breeze from the river and the noise of the trains overhead. It’s never boring.
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March 15th, 2013
Crash was painting this beautiful mural featuring Popeye on Houston and Bowery in New York City today. And there was legendary photographer Martha Cooper signing her book, being photographed by more legends Joe Conzo and Francisco Reyes II, good to see them all and meet graffiti artists Bio, Wane and BG183
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March 15th, 2013
There is a new genre of break dance and music in Venezuela – it is called Tuki. One day Marianna drove us to Petare a huge barrio clustered on a hill in the Palo Verde district. Across the street at the bottom of Petare is the Tuki school. There’s a courtyard, guys playing basketball, people hanging out watching the game, dance studios, graffiti and murals of Chavez painted on the walls.
‘Tuki’ is a music and dance style stemming from hard house and techno and it primarily came from the barrios of Venezuela.The music is a variation of “Changa” a Venezuelan slang word from the 90s meaning “House music”. The sound developed into a music style called Raptor House, which gave birth to Tuki. A dancer tells me ‘There was a perception that if you were Tuki you were a criminal but you’d rather see your son dancing than going out robbing’ . Tuki mixes Venezuelan street styles and pop culture – and just like hip hop came from people making ‘Something from nothing’
Respect to DJ Baba, His Majesty from the Raptor House Crew, DJ Yirvin, Elbert El Maestro, DJ Kike Abstractor, Branko J Wow, DJ De Ville, Parla Burgos, Joel Arritos, Andrews Guitiar-Locaotor, Anthony El Hiredero, Junior El Alucinante , Daniel Goillen Robots and many more.
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March 11th, 2013
“In Caracas if you don’t have attitude you are dead”
We took our students from Roberto Mata’s photo school to shoot in Los Dos Caminos, a square where the Caracas youth go to skateboard and hang out in the afternoon. The square was jumping, kids breakdancing, skateboarding, just chilling after school, met some of Caracas’ rap community P.Lu.K, Rone, and friends who generously posed for the class in a graffiti bombed alley around the corner. Many Venezuelan parents do not allow their kids out on the street as kidnapping and robbery are so prevalent in the city. It was great to see this square full of youth just enjoying themselves on a sunny afternoon.
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March 9th, 2013