Adam Yauch Park is a peaceful oasis in Brooklyn. Kids playing in the sunshine. I think MCA would approve.
Hip Hop
LL Cool J
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
Salt-N-Pepa Burton Lifebeat
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
Crash on Houston St
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
Caracas Youth Culture in Los Dos Caminos
“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
Venezuela Hip Hop School Tiuna El Fuerte
Visited Tiuna El Fuerte, a community based cultural center in the dusty El Valle neighborhood of Caracas Built from old shipping containers piled one on top of the other made into a recording studio, a store with spray cans of all colors, an underground performance space, classrooms, for art, hip hop, break dancing workshops, It is funded by the government and run by the rap artists Apache aka Cultur MC and Piky (below) who teach the local community the four elements of hip hop.
Tiuna El Fuerte is a c
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March 8th, 2013
Made in New York- the 1980′s
Inspired by Penguin paperbacks, fanzines and artist Edward Ruscha’s series, I decided to self publish these small books in a limited edition featuring mostly unseen photographs from my archives of the times. Order them from me directly or get them at Bookmarc and Dashwood. The third book ‘Made in New York -the 1980′s’ is just out.
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March 5th, 2013
Patti Astor Fun Gallery
On Saturday I went to Patti Astor’s long awaited book launch for the ‘Fun Gallery ..the true story’, it was jammed with her friends, artists from back in the days : Bill Stelling (co owner of the gallery), Jane Dickson, Collette, Charlie Ahearn (above) and many more.
Patti Astor started the Fun Gallery with Bill Stelling in 1981, they gave the first shows to many artists including Basquiat, Lee Quinones, SHARP, Keith Haring, Fab 5 Freddy, Cey One, Zephyr, and Revolt. It got it’s name when Kenny Scharf’s show “Atoms Can Be Fun” filled the front window with doomed, melting figures. The space was constantly changing – Dondi White flooded the Fun with graffiti heads collected from every borough in New York, Jane Dickson painted the space neon green to hang her gritty cityscapes on vinyl and Lee Quinones covered the front with a huge sprayed “MOM.
I first encountered graffiti artists in London while working for Melody Maker in 1981 where I photographed Futura and Dondi (below) at the first hip hop event to come to the UK. A month later I shot rapper/artist J Water Negro (below) for the Christmas cover of the magazine. In 1982 I moved to New York and a few years later I was living on Avenue B and 8th Street, riding on graff covered trains and going to art shows at the Fun Gallery, Gracie Mansion, PPOW et al. Patti’s book is a great read, it totally captures the crazy early 80′s East Village art scene.
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October 9th, 2012
Adam Yauch and The Beastie Boys
RIP Adam Yauch aka MCA, one of the founders of the Beastie Boys. The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just two weeks ago.
I shot this photo of the Beastie Boys for Rolling Stone in 1985 – they arrived with their producer Rick Rubin who had signed them to his label Def Jam. Their songs like “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” and “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” changed the world of hip hop.
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May 4th, 2012
Ricky Powell
Ricky Powell invited me to photograph him in his natural habitat in the West Village – I call him the ‘Lenny Bruce of hip hop’ The legendary photographer and ‘Professor of the Rickford Institute’ is an original- born in New York City 50 years ago, he lives the life. His apartment is crazy, stuff spilling off the shelves, sports memorabilia, jazz records, old magazines, well thumbed books, graffiti on the walls, an empty wine bottle covered in photos from Ron Galella, girlie pics, empty champagne bottles, beer bottles, sneakers, photos and film canisters.
Ricky interviewed me last year for Frank Magazine – we were sitting on a park bench in Washington Square Park, that he called ‘his office’ one afternoon, He seemed to know everyone in the park ‘Oh Shit there goes ..’ jumps up and takes their photo with his trusty Minolta AF2 Hi-Matic camera, stops to yell “Shut up!” at some loud teenage girls and comes back to the bench to ask me some more crucial questions. He said he wanted to ‘peep my shit’ which he did in Frank 151 Chapter 43.
Legend has it that he ditched a job selling Frozade ices to go on the ‘Raising Hell’ tour with the Beastie Boys and Run DMC, he acted like a ‘rascal’ and was immortalized in rhyme with the line, “Homeboy, throw in the towel/Your girl got dicked by Ricky Powell.”
Ricky is the man ! and a pretty good photographer too.
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May 4th, 2012