Zach Wolfe on Alfamega:

This shot is front of the Hilliard Street [Residence] Hotel, which is off of Auburn Avenue and Edgewood Street, downtown [in Atlanta]. It’s abandoned now and completely boarded up; it was in the process of being shut down at that point. The nickname on street is Pink City—crackhouse, whorehouse, pretty much one of the hardest spots in downtown Atlanta. The video I did with Pill is right in that area—not “Trap Goin’ Ham;” I did “Glass,” the black and white one right after that. They came after me to do that video right after “Trap Goin’ Ham” came out. They were like, “We want to shoot in the same area.” I was like, The only way I can do it without looking like I’m biting these other guys is if I shoot it black and white. So I just did a real grittier black and white play on that video. That was my first video that got to MTV. That was pretty cool.

Anyway, this shot right here: the day before the album cover shoot—which his album never came out—we were scouting and I showed up to the hotel before him. I pulled into the parking lot and a couple of guys came out and started yelling at me. They were like, “You need to get out of here or we’re gonna put something in you.” I was like, Whoa. They kept saying it over and over: We’re gonna put something in you. I was like, “I get it, I get it.” They’re like, “We’re gonna steal your camera, man. You’re done.” They had me trapped in the parking lot. I was by myself. I was like, This is it. These guys are dead serious. I see Alfamega pull up in his Dodge Ram and he could see from, like 30 yards away that I was like, C’mon dude, get out of your truck and help me out.

He gets out of his truck and starts screaming, “You got a problem with Zack, you got a problem with me! It’s going down!” He runs up the stairs—Alfamega’s not a small dude—and just gets in these dudes faces, starts spitting at them and basically like two minutes later everything was cool.

The next day, I convinced the label to go shoot there—without telling them that story—knowing Alfamega said, It’s all good now, they’re all clear. But, even on this shot right here, these two guys, apparently after I shot this shot right here, went up to him and they were like, “We’re gonna steal his camera. You gotta tell him if he shoots one more shot of us, we’re gonna take his camera and all his gear.” [Alfamega] came up to me and he was like, “I’m not gonna stop them. So I suggest you stop shooting me with those dudes in the background.”

I’d say a month later that place shut down, so I feel lucky that I got to cover that hotel before it was gone. I was definitely not the first person to shoot there, but probably the first person to shoot here with Octobanks and go in there pretty deep.

More Alfamega x Zach Wolfe here.

Zach Wolfe on Gucci Mane:

This was my first time shooting Gucci—my first time meeting him, all that. There was a lot of buzz around him in Atlanta at the time; an insane amount—anywhere you drove around in Atlanta you would hear Gucci being bumped in the cars. Two years ago, at that time it was just like “Guccimania,” so it was exciting to get a chance to finally shoot him. It was Gucci Mane, Shawty Lo, OJ da Juiceman and Soulja Boy [for the cover of XXL Magazine]. That was a real stressful week because no one knew how to get all four of those guys together at one point in time. It basically came down to us to having 30 minutes with all four of them and [XXL] wanted two cover options, two 2-page spread options and solos. I’m like, It’s not possible. You’re killing me. We ended up doing the whole shoot in 23 minutes, it was crazy. I’ve never in my life been tested like that. It was a 90 degrees, dead summer day, there were entourages—entourages had entourages—it was ridiculous.

The cool story about Gucci was that we were setting up a couple hours before that. We were actually on Hilliard Street, but a couple of blocks back in another pretty seedy area of Atlanta. I picked that area because they wanted an urban vibe, but I knew I could do without anyone knowing I was doing it because it was abandoned. Anyway, we hear the roar of a car coming at us. We were like, What’s going on? And it was Gucci in a yellow Lambo, just flying down the street. He came up to us, unrolled his windows and he was just laughing his ass off. He was 30 minutes early. He was just laughing, smoking, like, “I bet you didn’t think I’d be early, did you?” I’m like, “No.” He rolls his window up and drives off. He was so excited that he was going to be on the cover of XXL that he couldn’t hide it. Also, we also didn’t know if OJ da Juiceman was gonna show up, but OJ da Juiceman was with him in the car and they were both just smiling, loving it.

I shot him for Vibe a month after that as well. Gucci’s photogenic. I think Gucci’s a lot sharper than people think he is. He was fun to shoot. We’re not talking about how to pose him, or whatever. He had an energy. I think I measure true superstars like that. Sometimes I feel [photographers] have to be swagger coaches and that’s not my job, in my opinion, personally. I’m here to capture who you are and make it a little richer than what it is. But I’m not here to give you style. Gucci deinfitely didn’t need any style points—he’s a character in front of the character. I have probably 2,000 shots of Gucci and almost all of them, I think, are useable as far as interesting shots are concerned. Sometimes you shoot someone and you get 500 shots and it’s like they just turned their head to the left or to the right or up and down—he’s got different energy for every shot.

More Gucci Mane x Zach Wolfe here and here.

Zach Wolfe on Mims:

It was February. February in Atlanta is really intriguing to me because it’s really foggy and it’s almost a Seattle-style of weather where you get really weird clouds that move really fast and sometimes it’s misting, sometimes the sun will pop through—it’s really unpredictable weather. There was a field—it’s not even a field, it’s just a lot; a housing project that they just leveled—and there was this huge, several football fields-big, empty piece of land right downtown Atlanta. And there’s a huge neon red Coca-Cola sign and at night it just illuminates the whole field. I had been going down there and scouting and I’d randomly done a location scout shot during the day and underexposed by like five stops, which is basically exactly what you see with this Mims shot. The person I was scouting with was completely silhouetted and had all of these dead trees behind him and I felt that if I could shoot Mims like that, but just popped one light on him, it would just be a moody shot. The album that I shot for was titled Guilt. I thought it would fit good for that theme: guilt based off of all of his success and coming from nothing—that was his mindset for the visuals for the album. It just came as a happy accident because I had been scouting a lot in that area. It’s a very somber shot—just pretty simple and really underexposed and shot with one light popping on his face.

More Mims x Zach Wolfe here.

extended from RESPECT. Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 3, on sale now:

excerpted from RESPECT. Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 3, on sale now:

As a sophomore at Mount Vernon High School in Iowa, Zach Wolfe took a photography elective to fill out his credits. Despite having grown up painting and drawing under the influence of creative parents and a grandmother who was an abstract artist, he had no desire to pursue the arts. “Once I hit high school, I must’ve thought I was too cool for school,” he says. “I just stopped doing art, period. I didn’t really consider [photography to be] art at the time. I was just messing around shooting my friends in high school; just trying to finish the assignment. I wasn’t really feeling it until I developed that roll of film—seeing the negatives, realizing that was my vision and my hands that developed the film, and my hands putting it into the enlarger and making a print.” To hear a photographer describe the darkroom process is to hear part science, part art, all transformation and mostly magic. Wolfe is no different. “Ever since then, there’s been no Plan B. I never looked back, and I never had any other goal in my life since that day but to do this. My parents bought me a darkroom with the little money they had a couple of months later. The last two years of high school, all I did was shoot and hang out in my little closet darkroom.”

After the jump: Wolfe shares the stories behind his shoots with Three 6 Mafia, T-Pain and Hurricane Chris. Which are not in the magazine and are all pretty much worth clicking for.

Three 6 Mafia:

I got hired by Vibe. It was their “Juice Issue” which highlights the people of that year who did big things. [Three 6 Mafia] had just won their Oscar and I couldn’t believe [Vibe] called me to shoot this. I was really freaking out when I got the call. They wanted me to drive to Memphis and shoot them going around Memphis with their Oscar and I was like, This is a dream come true. I can’t wait.

The funny story is we went up to Memphis to shoot this—we scouted out the day before and we had everything planned out. [Vibe] really wanted to get a shot of all three members walking down Beale Street on their Walk of Fame—they have music notes on Beale Street [so it would be] similar to a celebrity walking down Holloywood Boulevard with the stars—that’s what they really wanted. I can’t remember what else they wanted, but basically everything that was planned came to complete halt when [the group] showed up. We had Beale Street closed off, the cops were cool with it, we were all ready to go, we had lights all over the place. And basically just Juciy J and DJ Paul showed up and we were all like, Where’s Crunchy Black? And they were like, “There’s no more Crunchy Black.” And we were like,What? No one from Vibe knew, not even their publicist from New York knew that Crunchy Black was no longer part of the squad. I was the first person to find out about this and I’m like, “What do you mean?” I’m sitting there sweating because Vibe was like “All three of them.” I’m in the beginning photographer stages where I’m like, Any mistake can be my last mistake ever.  I’m worried about the photo editors at Vibe saying “Why did you not shoot Crunchy Black?” After a while they basically looked at me they were like, “Look: no Crunchy Black.” I’m like, Alright, moving on the next. I say, “Let’s do a shot of you guys walking down the Walk of Fame,” and they were like, “Nah.”

Basically, Juciy J was not really responsive at all. I was like, “What’s up, man? What’s going on?” He was like, “Zach, man, have you ever gone out drinking and smoking all night and partying and not slept?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Yeah. Thats where i’m at right now. Can you get me a Sprite?” He was just hanging on by a string. DJ Paul was cool; he was totally into it, but it was a struggle to get them in it together. It was hot out and I could tell I was losing them, so I suggested going into this restaurant and getting some food ’cause they said they were hungry and that’s what turned out to be in the shoot. I was like, “Put the Oscar on the table and let’s just get bunch of food, and just do what you want to do.” I remember after they got done eating Juicy J started falling asleep, which you can see in some of the shots. I was sweating as I was shooting because it was like, Vibe’s gonna… It’s over; I’m done. I remember driving back to Atlanta from Memphis, the whole time freaking out, telling my assistant, “I’m gonna turn around and find them. We have to go and shoot them somewhere else. I’m screwed; it’s over.” And it turned out to be one of the more well-known shoots I did. It’s pretty funny how things end up.

More Three 6 Mafia x Zach Wolfe here.

T-Pain:

This was another Vibe assignment. They wanted me to shoot him in Miami and I’d been going down to Miami for a long time now to shoot the Maximo Gomex Domino Park which is full of a lot of Cuban refugees. I had been shooting it just as a personal project for years and for some reason I just thought that T-Pain was the one to do it. I proposed it to them and it was a battle for like two weeks—they were like, No, just shoot him in the studio. Just shoot him outside of the studio. I feel like you can set T-Pain up and get a good shot of him, so my instincts were that we’d probably want to put him in some sort of a situation.

It was pretty cool. He didn’t know what to think of it. He showed up, he was still drunk from the night before, he pulled up in some $120,000 car—all he wanted was McDonald’s and just to hang out ad to stay out of the sun. I was like, “I think you should play dominoes with these guys.” He was like, “I don’t know how to play Dominos.” I said, “You’re a smart guy. You could figure it out.”  I got a couple fo these guys that I had met through the years and they remembered me. I gave that guy [in the picture] twenty bucks and this other guy twenty bucks and they were teaching T-Pain dominoes and he ended up loving it. He had a great time.

More T-Pain x Zach Wolfe here.

Hurricane Chris:

That guy definitely smokes more weed than anybody I’ve ever met in my life. He takes the crown. He literally smokes non-stop. Like, Lil’ Wayne has four weed rollers and gets handed packs of 12 blunts at a time—no. Hurricane Chris kills them all. That dude doesn’t even breathe air. It was a challenge to shoot him without him smoking. The label was like, We’re not going to use this shit. I was like, Fuck, it looks dope—I don’t give a fuck if you use it or not, I’ma shoot it! Every set up that we would do, he’d have to smoke one to two blunts and he would smoke them by himself—just smoke ‘em down. He was pulling such big hits that smoke was like milk and it was making all these crazy textures. That’s all that was—just a simple black and white shot, black background.

More Hurricane Chris x Zach Wolfe here.

Chris Buck, who, amongst other things, snapped the photo adorning the front cover our latest issue, was actually featured in our second issue. During our time with him, we found Chris to be incredibly insightful and courteous. And we have no good excuse for not having put up our interview with him sooner. Please forgive us.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

How did you get into photography? What was it about photography that excited you?

I was just very interested in popular culture in general and music in particular, and photography is something that was just around. My father worked for Kodak, so it was something around that I was aware of.  And when I did start doing it, I seemed to have some sort of aptitude for it, so it became my way to connect to popular culture.

What did your dad do for Kodak?

He was like a manager; I don’t know. You know how it is with fathers—they kind of change, shift around positions a little bit. Actually funny, at one point, I worked there as a summer job and he was in charge of a building. It was film coding—he was in charge to the film coding building and I was the lowest person in the film coding building. So while he was the boss of the building and the manager of it, I was the guy cleaning the toilets. To be fair, I could get respect because my father was the boss and everyone knew that. I had the night job, cleaning the cafeteria and the toilets.

Did you interact with a lot a photographers at that time were you like, It’s a job to put money in my pockets?

That was a job. I was working. I didn’t really intern with photographers or assist so much. People do that sometimes and it could be a great way to learn, but it’s not something I had a chance to do. Once I got out of school and got a little more ambitious, I made a point of contacting photographers in Toronto and  picking their brains. I wasn’t shy about asking questions about the business and how to run a business and such and how to deal with celebrities or magazines. And then immigration became an issue because I wanted to move to the States.

Did you have any formal training?

Yes. I went to school for photography. Going to school for photography is a little absurd—it’s essentially a basic craft: you learn it and then you get out and start taking pictures.

How long did you go to school for?

Amazingly, it’s a four-year program. Four years of learning how to test exposure and take a decent print. I went straight from high school to college. I finished college when I was 23 and I moved to New York when I was 26.

How did you come to New York? Was it like: I’m coming with my camera and my roll of film and I’m going to make it? Was that your attitude?

It’s a little more complex than that. The way it actually happened was that I had just finished school and a friend of mine had decide to take a trip top New York and San Francisco, just as a fun post-grauduation trip. Really, we only went there because that’s where we knew people we could stay with for free—the classic kind of college approach. I had made a portfolio in college, so I brought it with me to New York  and I showed it around to music magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone. I also went to Esquire ad Vanity Fair, all the big magazines. I got a very nice response and I was quite surprised at how friendly and welcoming people were considering I was basically just a photo student from a foreign country. But everyone was very welcoming. Then when I went back to Canada—I really hadn’t shown my work yet—I decided to do the same thing. After the warm response I got in New York, I actually found it very difficult [in Canada]. The doors were largely closed and the attitude was Come to us when you have something of substance to show us. Since I was just out of school, I only had a relatively modest portfolio. It was very disconcerting and I realized New York was just a much more welcoming place to be an artist, so I began to make my plan come here.

One thing I did that I think served me very well, was that I worked for a music paper in Toronto that was very modest but it gave me a chance to do some professional assignments. It gave me a kind of creative fulfillment but also gave me some professional experience. So once I did d try to seek bigger magazines out in the world, I wasn’t totally intimidated. That was very important.

A lot of the photos you take are highly conceptualized?  What is your process like?

The first thing I do, if  I don’t know their work very well, is try to get to know them as much as I can through interviews with them, any video footage I can find, just anything so I can immerse myself in who they are and what they do and what they’re about. It definitely helps me a lot to not always just to know what concept I want to do, but also to know what I would not want to do. I think oftentimes you might see pictures of one of your favorites artists and you think that’s kind of not really appropriate for them. Not that it would be offensive, just it would seems silly or not quite right for them. I think my pictures, even if they are conceptual, they’re pretty appropriate to who the person is and what they’re about. I make a point of learning who they are and what they’re about so the picture will have some relationship to who they are and their history. That’s very important to me. It also helps when I’m actually working with them because I might know things to talk about with them that they might have an interest in, or  if we have some person in common or some history in common that I could bring up and we can make a bond in some way.

It’s funny that you say the photos are appropriate. They are appropriate, but they don’t seem to be what you would expect.

How are they not what you would expect?

I’m looking specifically at this 50 Cent one where he has the lollipop in his mouth. Usually with him it’s this scowling, mean…

Right. I think that for most artists, the photographers, you want to do something that usually isn’t seen. Maybe for some people it’s taking 50 Cent’s threatening tough guy quality to a new level of awesomeness. But for me it’s usually trying to do something that you don’t usually see them doing, but that’s still appropriate. 50 Cent is a pretty soft spoken, kind of friendly guy. He definitely has his standards and there’s things he cares about; he has his priorities. But he’s not rude or anything. In a professional setting, he’s not going to be threatening to people he’s working with. He’s tough, but when you deal with him, it’s not like he comes in being physically threatening or anything like that. He’s a professional person. When we did the shoot with him… Do you mind if I talk about that shoot in particular?

Not at all. Go ahead…

Continued in Part 2…

PHOTO: Sian Kennedy/RETNA

On November 19, 1998, Sian Kennedy showed up at the temporary residence of a new rapper being touted as the next big thing for the following year. The rapper’s name was Eminem. And Kennedy, on assignment for Spin magazine, started snapping images of his subject almost as soon as the door opened. The rapper didn’t like that too much.

For our latest issue, we spoke to the rapper and the photographer about the experience. Because that’s what we do.

After the jump, read the extended versions of the stories behind the photoshoot, which we couldn’t fit into our magazine.

Eminem:

I haven’t seen that photo in at least 10 years. I’d seen a few of them when that issue first came out, but I haven’t seen it in at least 10 years. There’s more than just this picture that came out in that chair; I’ve seen a bunch. I’m sitting in a chair that looks like it’s kinda from the garbage. That’s ’cause it was—from the garbage. That was the first photo shoot that I ever had with Spin. [Dr.] Dre had put me up in Burbank. It was right before the first record came out and Dre had put me up in Burbank in a little apartment somewhere, and the photographers were coming to the apartment. I had just got off a plane or whatever. I walked in, had just set my luggage down, and I hear a knock on the door and these two photographers come in. When I open the door, they got a camera in my face and they just start taking pictures. I’m like, What the fuck? I know I gotta do a photoshoot, but Jesus Christ! So I didn’t even get a chance to [do anything]. I’m like, Yo, you mind if I shower? They’re like, Oh, we’ll wait! So I went in, I showered, I came out and we went somewhere in the city and we ended up going to a alley and taking that picture. I think it was right next to a dumpster and they found a chair that was by there and they were like, You mind sitting in this? I was like, Alright, whatever, so we took some pictures.

That’s an Avirex jacket; that was actually Royce’s jacket. Me and Royce [da 5' 9"] had Avirexes and we traded jackets. I had bought a brown one and he bought a black one, and I liked his better and he liked mine better, so we just traded jackets. I specifically remember that jacket. I think it wore it for like a year, two years straight. I was very [much]—especially in the beginning stages, I mean, I still am—a creature of habit as far as certain things that I get attached to; a certain pair of pants and a certain jacket and I’m keeping it forever. I don’t think I still have that jacket. I don’t even know where it went.  But that’s kind of specifically how I remember that jacket, though.

Sian Kennedy:

It was a nice apartment. It was empty, basically; a new couch, but definitely it looked like he just rolled up. I had a point-and-shoot on my waist, just a little tiny snappy camera,and I was taking some shots of him. In the beginning, we were in his house and he started doing all the signs in my face. I said, “Man you look like a punk, don’t do that.” I was trying to do a little bit of trash talking with him, but he didn’t like that at all. He was like, “What are you talking about? I’m not a punk!” I said, “I’m just kidding. I was trying to get a rise out of you.” So that tactic didn’t work.

You just try for moments and since he was going to be one of the ‘top ten things’ of 1999 or something like that, the world didn’t know who he really was, we were kinda introducing him. It really wasn’t working out in the apartment. I had these places scouted out in South Central. I think we went in my car—he had a publicist and I had an assistant. I remember he put in his tape in my cassette deck, cranked it up really loud and we all listened to it, so we couldn’t talk. We went to South Central and there was a place—I found like this little hamburger joint/taco stand that had a little courtyard fenced in with round cement tables and round cement benches. There was a record store/pot shop right next door.

When we got out of the car and we were walking around and started taking pictures on the street, all the kids were singing his raps. And this was before any records were out. It kinda surprised me because he’s from Detroit and the kids are in South Central. They totally loved him. He was already a star in their minds. They were running up beside us and watching and rapping his raps to him. It was pretty cool. This is before any press or any radio stuff or anything like that. That was kinda awesome.

We shot stuff in the record store, we shot stuff in the alley, we shot stuff by the restaurant, against the wall. I was trying to get him to do stuff, just to be himself and not this projection of a superstar. That’s kind of the way it is: they have the mean look and they do the sign into the camera. He was wasn’t into [my suggestions] at all. We were kind of battling; he was trying to [be a superstar] and I was trying to get something of him. I don’t think either one of us got our way. I think [the shots] were okay, but not great.

This is the part that I remember the best: All these guys gathered around and they were passing a joint. They all sat down around this round table, there’s like six of them. Eminem sat down next to them and they started passing the joint around and rapping—whoever wasn’t rapping was making percussion on the table with their hands, making vocalizations. So they start rapping and they’re going around the table and they’re pretty good but when it comes to Eminem’s turn, he just blows them out of the water. It’s so obvious: he’s rapping about me, the photographer looking like a dork, making fun of everybody and just really in the moment and funny and good. It was pretty great because he delivered in that moment spontaneously. And they knew it. It was a battle and they were crushed. That was kind of the highlight of that.

I just thought he was a chump, to tell you the truth. I was gaining a little bit of respect when the kids knew who he was and then we he did that rap with them it was like, Okay. This guy is for real. He’s a real artist. A lot of times you take a pictures of people and it’s just a bunch of hype—they’re just pumped up by a record company and it’s not that they’re some amazing artist.

]]> http://respect-mag.com/eminem-x-sian-kennedy/feed/ 1 http://respect-mag.com/volume-1-issue-3/ http://respect-mag.com/volume-1-issue-3/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:30:35 +0000 exo http://respect-mag.com/?p=1027

On sale now. Photograph by Chris Buck.

]]> http://respect-mag.com/volume-1-issue-3/feed/ 4 http://respect-mag.com/second-issue/ http://respect-mag.com/second-issue/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:06:29 +0000 exo http://respect-mag.com/?p=188

Issue No. 2 of RESPECT. is now available at bookstores and newsstands.

This is a magazine about beautiful photography.

That’s what Sally Berman, our photo editor, reminded me of as this second issue of RESPECT. began to lose focus. Sally’s the heart and soul of this mag, and raising our baby is nothing if not a village effort. Our new designer, Adam Levite, stepped in to shape our body, starting with a skeleton that came together piece by piece, not always in order and not always on time. Morgan Stone, our copy editor, dresses us up proper with communication etiquette, grammar and punctuation, making sure we leave the house looking like we had some home training. And our (mostly) fearless publisher, J.R., is our wheeling and dealing parental figure, making magic happen during high- powered, cigar-smoking meetings—playing the part of our “suit” without ever truly being one.

Me? I get stuck with being the voice, trying to draft a statement that represents us and our mission. I get the easy part. Easy because this magazine is not about us. It’s about beautiful photography—and getting it into your hands. We’re just a conduit; a sometimes stressed-out conduit, but a functional one at the end of the (elongated) publishing cycle. We don’t do it for the money, we don’t do it for the glory—we do it because sometimes life gets to be too much, and this is our gift of escapism, of inspiration, our nod to the creativity that’s worth a thousand words.

Every photographer in this issue stresses the idea of capturing the “moment,” revisiting the word repeatedly, holding it up for inspection until it becomes a meditation and philosophy in itself. And what, exactly, is this moment that we’re living in? Is it our own individual conversations with mortality and purpose, made all the louder when the earth shook and broke in Haiti, as we were set to begin our publishing cycle? Is it watching our shining knight of a president as the cracks in his armor begin to show, and his struggle to carry the weight of our hopes makes him seem fallible, defeatable, human? Or is it Apple Inc. guru Steve Jobs polishing off a shiny new toy that will undoubtedly, once again, change the way we interact with information, with each other, with the world?

We’re not sure. But we do know that this moment is all those things and more. And we also know that right now there are people behind shutters, documenting whatever it is that’s going on, catching the images that define an ever-changing world, bringing light to what we would not know existed without them. We thank them for being there. Without them, there is no way a magazine about beautiful photography could exist.

And we thank you. Because without you, we’d have no reason to exist.

With respect,

kris ex

Premiere issue is available now at Barnes and Noble and Borders.

As any professional photographer, photo editor, graphic designer or writer can attest, a lot of great images and words never make it past the edit rounds of a magazine. There’s just not enough room for everything. Even with the seemingly limitless possibilities and content populating the World Wide Web, there remain scores of visionary moments, enlightening tales and grin-worthy anecdotes that never reach you, the consumer. It’s the way things are.

But it doesn’t have to be the way things will be. Respect is about bringing you what would otherwise be left on the cutting room floor, boxed up in a studio or collecting digital dust on a hard drive. Why? Because we believe beauty is worth seeing.

With this inaugural issue, we bring you rare frames from nine photographers whose work has helped shape not only your visions of hip-hop’s icons, but hip-hop’s view of itself. And, even with this, we’ve had to leave out moving and engaging stories, pristine and iconic shots. There are photographers whose work couldn’t make this issue, just as there are those whom we’ve recently lost— namely Shawn Mortensen, whose most enduring image may very well be the definitive snapshot of Tupac Shakur, in a straitjacket; and the great Irving Penn, who, while not a hip-hop photographer, undoubtedly inspired every lensman in this issue.

Despite our limitations, we believe we’ve done something that’s worthy of your respect and that of the photographers who graciously granted us access to their archives, their memories and some of the secrets behind their techniques. While they all work in the same medium, they’re a varied bunch with unique idiosyncrasies that move through their particular creative waves and empower this issue with fascinating contrast. The incomparable Phil Knott isn’t big on taking photos where eyes are prominent; Barron Claiborne’s stirring, nigh-surrealist shots are almost always all about the eyes. Danny Clinch’s superb take on reality relishes in the candid, unscripted moments; Anthony Mandler’s panoramic imagination leads him to create elaborate fantasy settings that juxtapose subjects with uncommon settings.

What all of the masters in this volume do have in common is a humbling respect for each other and for their subjects. And if there is a single thread throughout their work, it’s a mission to capture the bold and the bewitching, no matter how sublime, and translate it into something you can hold in your hands to open up worlds within yourself.

In that way, they are like the creative staff of this magazine, working to create something you will cherish, something you can respect. This is an offering. We hope you find it worthy.

kris ex,Editor

Acclaimed photographer Ben Watts’ recently released Lickshot—a follow-up to 2003’s well-received Big Up—is part photo book, part journal, and all vibrant, raucous, in-your-face exercise where still images spark with kinetic energy to burst and crackle on the page. And it’s not by accident. The 42-year-old limey, who now calls New York City home, has been chronicling his progress in scrapbooks since his days at Australia’s Sydney College of the Arts. “I do that for myself,” says Watts, whose latest effort registers encounters with everyone from Adrien Brody to Jay-Z. “People have always enjoyed my journals, so now I got them published for more people to see.”

So would it be safe to categorize his books as visual memoirs? “I think that’s going a little bit deep,” laughs Watts. “But they’re definitely my personal journals.”

His work may speak for itself, but he’s not too shabby either:

I was, as a teenager, really interested in cult—cult fashion, cult music, cult gear. I was like a rudeboy back in England, listening to ska music. I was really into that, and then I got into Motown, and I went from there to reggae, and then the hip-hop thing exploded and took off. When I first became exposed to it, it was, like, ’86, ’85. I just really dug the music and what was being said, and I felt like it was a natural progression [of what I had been listening to]. That became my passion.

From there I went to college, started learning photography and sort of culled any information that I was interested in—music-wise, fashion-wise, energy- wise, just feeling-wise—into my pictures, even if they didn’t have an immediate connection; sort of that street style that hip-hop represents. To me, that was the part of it that was interesting about it. Later on, when it became all about bling culture and all that stuff, it’s still interesting—but definitely not as interesting as the raw street edge that I really fell in love with.

My first book was definitely a journal dedicated to urban youth culture and street culture, but this one is more of a progression onward and [shows] more sophistication in my work. My passion certainly still remains the same, but I didn’t want to be accused of making the same book twice. I wanted it to be something that still has the thread of continuity, but to bring it into a more sophisticated genre, without alienating people who appreciated my work. The worst thing that can happen to me is for someone who appreciated my first book to pick [Lickshot] up and say, “This guy sold out. This is weak.” I put my best foot forward.

Josh Cheuse

When you were doing these shots, were you just capturing moments?

Or did you have this sense of history and documenting something that you felt was important? I knew something was happening, and I’m not a musical person, so the camera was my tool to pick up and get involved in the scene. It’s almost like the punk- rock ethos. I was this punk kid in New York—I wasn’t in London, I missed punk rock, so hip-hop was kind of my punk rock. Hanging out with Mike and Adam and Adam [a.k.a. the Beastie Boys], we just knew that something was kicking off. We used to go to Queens, hang out with those guys or whatever. I can’t say at the time I knew it was going to be culturally significant 20 years later. All I really knew was it was exciting, it was fun, I was working with my friends, I was doing something I love to do and it felt good. I didn’t know it was history—I didn’t even know what “history” was, in a way.

Did you have any training with a camera?

I never really knew much about technique except what I learned in junior high school at the time, because I was in school and was just sneaking off to do these things. I was reading today about Robert Frank, who’s like my “God”; he was this amazing photographer from Switzerland who came here when he was 22, and he went across America and just shot pictures with his black-and-white film. It was something like that. Specifically him and then a few other photographers in London—like Pennie Smith, who was working with the Clash and people like that—inspired me to pick up the camera, throw the black-and-white film in there and not worry so much about the technique or the lighting at the moment. It was more about the feeling.

Has this changed over the years, or do you proceed with this same ethos?

To this day, it still feels like magic to me, when you send the film into the lab and it’s developed, that there’s an image at all. It’s like a magical thing between the chemicals and the silver and the gelatin and the light and that combination of elements that makes an image. And kind of the spirit of the person somehow is involved in that—it’s alchemy. I wasn’t the greatest in the darkroom as far as my printing, but there was a photographer named David Gahr, he was a real inspiration and mentor, and he used to say to me: “You’re a poet, you’re not a printer.” Now I have a great printer and I stick to the poetry.

In June 2005, Clay Patrick McBride—who’d done innumerable projects for magazines, dozens of album covers and print campaigns for multinational conglomerates—orchestrated the photo shoot which may be his defining set. “It’s still some of the best work I’ve made,” says McBride. “It’s the bar that I measure everything up against. Like, when will I do work that’s as good, better, that’s as well-executed and conceived as that work?”

On the surface, it seemed routine: to capture then Def Jam Records president Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and his morphing Roc-a-Fella roster for the cover of XXL magazine. “I can photograph a big group like nobody else,” McBride says. “That’s my strength. I take control of situations.” Challenging himself, the photographer decided to imbue the shoot with gravitas and played up the “President Carter” angle by re-creating classic portraits from John F. Kennedy’s administration. “I’m always looking to photojournalism as a way of telling stories, because they tell stories all the time. They’re always bringing us the information.”

He thought to use the Oval Office set from the TV drama The West Wing, but in the end decided to build his own from scratch. The detailing was extravagant, down to the Roc-A-Fella logo in the carpet. Two “giant” studios were rented, one just for talent and crew and entourages, partitioned off with foam core. LeBron James showed up because, in Jay’s words, “I got reach.” Camera crews from national entertainment news outlets showed up. There was a lot of pressure. “But then you had Jay there kinda running the show,” recalls McBride. “As much as it was my photo shoot, he was the one cracking the whip, telling everybody to hustle.”

The photographer focused on capturing the perfect images; visuals that were both sacred and blasphemous—destined to inspire and infuriate. “I have to think of the people who those images might have pissed off, like any of those confederate flag–wearing, Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist, weird skinhead people,” he says. “I hope the pictures made some people think, because that’s what its intention was. It wasn’t just another picture of hip-hop. I think it was saying something about what a person’s potential is.”