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[Photo Credit: Lisa Leone]
Like the music industry, photography has moved from the hands of a
few well-equipped elite to the masses, practiced by anyone with access
Instagram filters. Just as there are rappers competing with the majors
from home studios, there are now a plethora of photographers whose
creative expertise with their camera phones can shame even the most
expensive DSLR. In fact, most photographers in 2015 don’t even consider
themselves photographers, just people with cameras in their smartphones.
It’s led to an influx of images flooding the internet, you can scroll
infinitely on Tumblr and see breakfast blunts and midnight margaritas,
throwback Thursdays and stalker Saturdays, food porn and actual porn,
snapchats and selfies. The excess amount of quantity over quality
creates a field of lilies and landmines on the world wide web.
Celebrities and the entertainment industry are at the center of
photography’s metamorphosis. We’ve been inundated with daily reminders
that the famous are among us for years, but this is the first time we
are able to see them at such a high volume. Photography has always been a
major representation of the heroes that we adore, bringing us within
arms reach of the untouchable. Before anyone could upload images at the
slightest whim, magazine spreads and promo pics were crucial in filling
the gap of separation. There isn’t
a single photo of Marilyn Monroe
that doesn’t look professionally done, beauty was her brand, and to be
anything less would be damaging. There wasn’t camera phones to catch her
being less than angelic - even imagining a Marilyn Monroe selfie is
sacrilegious. Photographs were more cherished when there were less
pictures being absorbed. There was a physical relationship with
photographs, bedroom walls would be covered with posters and pictures of
the rich and famous, it was common to see pictures taped to the inside
of high school lockers or stuffed in the front of binders. Now you can
have a folder on your phone for pictures, gifs, and memes. There’s a
level of appreciation that feels lost, a level of appreciation I’m
attempting to recapture when I look at pictures of my favorite artists
and album covers.
I always assumed beautiful people in beautiful clothing just stood in
a studio and magic happened. I didn’t care about who was pressing the
shutter, just the results. It’s easy to forget that the photographer is
picked for a reason, that they have to possess a level of skill and
talent to be working with the skilled and talented. Once I began to
wonder about the person that is creating this wordless story, I started
to see how photography in a new light, and
Jonathan Mannion is
the photographer that really opened my eyes to the artistry of
photography in the music industry. Jonathan is famous for the portraits
and album covers he shot in the late ‘90s and 2000s, to call his career
anything less than iconic would be an underwhelming description.
Jonathan is well known for his classic album covers, his photos are like
the window to an album’s soul. This was when album art was the
critical, it was the first impression for people shopping in stores and
records shops, what they saw before hearing a single song, it can make a
world of difference to a new listener. You didn’t want anyone with a
camera shooting your cover, it was important to have a great
photographer that can capture the essence of your entire album in one
image. Someone that will deliver an eye-catching cover that will make
people stop. That’s what Jonathan did, he made covers that silently
revealed what awaited your ears. He made rappers look cool, edgy, and
debonair. He had creative vision, something you need in this line of
work. It was his idea to get DMX in a pool of blood for the
Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood album
cover. Insane? Very. The kind of cover you never forget. It’s easy to
assume such a picture was made with some editing software or a green
screen effect, but to think someone convinced crazy DMX to sit in a
bathtub full of blood is unbelievable.
Jonathan shot The Game most of his career, dating back to the early
Documentary days.
My favorite picture is the one with Game looking out the window with
pistol in hand and a table full of guns, drugs and narcotics. It
personifies the straight outta compton, menace to society image that
Game embodies. The shoot wasn’t planned, completely impromptu, the items
in the picture weren’t props placed by the label, it was literally what
was in the home, a testament to how Game was living before rap stardom.
That’s what I like about Jonathan, looking at his photos feels like he
captured exactly who they were at that moment. He freezes time like no
other before him. If there was a Michael Jordan of photography in the
music industry, that’s Jonathan Mannion.
90’s hip-hop photography has become an infatuation of mine since interviewing David McIntyre a few weeks ago about the
lost pictures
of Biggie. Talking with him, hearing his stories, it sparked my
interest. I wanted to see who else was behind the lens during a very
celebrated, Golden Age. My curiosity led me to Janette Beckman. Her
website has photos from 1982-1990 that will make any hip-hop head wish he could go back to the golden era. Photos of Rick Rubin
before he looked like
Merlin,
Flava Flave before reality show hijinks, LL Cool J when he was still
cool, a true archive of a distant time. A time of youth and charisma,
the word swag didn’t exist but they had plenty. Janette truly documented
the time, flipping through her photos is like walking through NYC when
hip-hop was in a completely different age than the one today. Fun, the
people in her photos look like they were having the time of their lives.
The fashion and the graffiti intertwined with getting a glimpse at the
OGs as young and hungry emcees is something special.
Danny Clinch
is another photographer that capsulated eras with his camera. He is
walking history, snapping portraits of everyone from Nas during
illmatic to
being the annual photographer for the GRAMMY winners. He literally
captures artists on a night where joy is an understatement. Not often
can you capture someone getting the most pristine award in their field.
What really got me into Danny Clinch’s work is his photos of Tupac. He
actually shot my favorite picture of Pac, it embodies how I always
envision him. The way his head is turned away from the camera, defiant,
but since he’s shirtless there’s something very sincere about his
defiance. He spent so much of his career being naked to the world, being
a hero and the villain, strong but sensitive, hard and vulnerable, in
that one image I see Tupac for the man that he was. The man I’ll never
know beyond the music and photos.
Looking back, peering into the past, it’s astounding how far we have come. Photos really make moments stand still.
Lisa Leone
did exactly that during the ‘80s and ‘90s. She was surrounded by a
captivating community and she captured what was transpiring during that
time. Lisa’s photos feel like the fly on the wall, being in the
background, capturing these interesting people before any of the wealth
and fame. She had an eye for capturing the people and not the personas.
You might not know
Chi Modu’s
name but I’m certain you are familiar with his work. His most famous
photo is likely the one with Biggie and Puffy holding the
B.I.G Mack box,
definitely an iconic hip-hop moment. Chi captured a lot of moments with
Big but my favorite has to be Biggie standing in front of the twin
towers. This is the Big that’s either blew up or on the cusp of blowing
up. He’s draped in this fluorescent coogi sweater, the dark shades, the
beanie cap, he looks like a playa Bill Cosby with the towers standing
behind him. Two immortal symbols of New York that ended in tragedy.
Behind every great photograph there’s a great story.
Jamil GS has an early photo of Jay Z, pre-
Reasonable Doubt with him standing in front of a boat. That same boat would later be bought and used in the "
In My Life Time" video. David Corio captured a picture of
Afrika Bambaataa
during one of the first hip-hop shows in London circa 1981. He’s
completely blacked out but the background is illuminated, a wall of
graffiti done by Fab 5 Freddy.
That’s what I love about photography, it’s an intimate art form. The
photographer, the camera, and the subject are going to tell us something
without words, telling visual stories that will outlast the Tumblr
girls and fish eye photos. We have to appreciate the photographers with
something to say during an age where there’s very little being said.
It’s a clustered industry, saturated, pictures are being stolen, credit
is lost, you can have an image acquiring a ton of traffic and no one
will know who shot it. Kendrick is being
sued over
the artwork used for the “Blacker The Berry” single. The photo is
beautiful, two black babies being breast fed. The photographer, Giordano
Cipriani, didn’t give
TDE permission to use the image and is
asking for $150,000 for each time the photo was used. That’s a lot of
money, but I understand his frustration, having your art stolen, used,
and uncredited is a situation no artist wants to be in. Sadly, it’s
fairly common in the industry, an epidemic in an age where images are
more disposable than even music.
Art is in a constant state of change and evolution. Era’s begin and
end, nothing is the same long, the beauty of transformation. The beauty
of photography allows us to revisit these era's, able to grasp the past
while living in the present. Photography is in an extremely interesting
period, this is the first time in history where almost everyone in the
world has access to a device capable of pixelating, uploading, and
sharing every minute of every moment. The photographers that will join
the ranks of those mentioned in this article will be the ones that make
those moments remarkable and memorable. We'll still remember the images
that stand out amongst the clutter, the pictures with a story to tell.
[
By Yoh, aka Yoh Mannion, aka
@Yoh31]
