The Rap-Up conducted an informative interview with Brent Rollins, best known as the visual genius behind ego trip magazine. He talks about his design aesthetic being in the spirit of hip-hop beyond signifiers like graffiti arrows, working with photography, biters, the changes in album packaging and how advances in technology are creating less canvasses for artists.

Some excerpts:

You know what, doing some kind of public space would be really fun. Like a nightclub, doing something where people can walk in and get taken to somplece else. That’s an exciting idea, something physical, especially now man, everything’s digital man, it’s wack, no one has stuff anymore. No one touches things, experiences things, you know? I think it’s about giving people a real experience.

:::::

For me, it starts with the idea, the photography and the collaging and stuff, that’s what it’s made of but it has to start with an idea first. A lot of people, when they see something, they look at the surface and don’t see the thought process behind it. For instance, people that diss Apple computers, they say “Oh it’s just about the design, they want it to be cool” and yeah, maybe it looks nice, but the design is really well thought out. It’s not just that it looks great, but it works great. The design helps you work with it, interact with it. People look at the surface without thinking about the function. So with album covers, the function of the design is that it has to communicate an idea. it’s not just about the style, or the collage, or I’ma take a photograph and put this color on top of it, it’s about what’s my idea behind it first. I think people who bite, they just look at what’s on the surface.

He also shares that his orange socks and Air Jordans appear in the movie poster for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which is the type of trivia which we hope will come in handy some day.

(vi@ NahRight)

LATE PASS: Last week, RESPECT. contributor Kenneth Cappello threw up some images on his blog, including this one of the Clipse. The story behind this photoshoot includes angry rednecks, a rainstorm and an unimpressed Pusha T. Unfortunately, we couldn’t fit it all in the magazine. But keep checking back. We’ll be posting an extended version of our conversation with KC right here. We’re pretty sure you’ll get a kick out of his experiences with R. Kelly and Mike Tyson, as well as his thoughts on Game.

RELATED: Cappello also recently took some shots of Supreme’s Spring/Summer 2010 line with pro skater Jason Dill. Which means that he not only has a better wardrobe than us, but he also gets to hang out with cooler people.

]]> http://respect-mag.com/kenneth-cappello-contact-sheets/feed/ 0 http://respect-mag.com/eyes-and-hearts-for-haiti/ http://respect-mag.com/eyes-and-hearts-for-haiti/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:37:14 +0000 exo http://respect-mag.com/?p=287

The work of RESPECT. contributors Janette Beckman and Danny Clinch (along with a gang of other artists) will be part of  Eyes and Hearts for Haiti, a silent auction of visual art taking place this Friday, March 12th at Aperture Studios Miami. All proceeds will be directed to Friends of the Orphans.

(vi@ Brian Smith)

RESPECT. contributor Chris Buck does great, thoughtful interviews. (You can get an ample supply of his insight by going to his site and clicking the little iron icon.) Chris’ work is quirky, just a hair shy of silly, dancing between the mundane and transcendent. Over at Heather Morton he talks about his approach to Diesel’s “Be Stupid” campaign. As always, he’s extremely practical and professional. Which is not quite what you’d expect form a guy who takes a picture of Andy Samberg high-fiving some sort of cat.

(vi@ The Reference Council)

RELATED: Lee Jeans recruits Ben Watts to shoot their Fall/Winter 2010 campaign

Mali-born documentary photographer Malick Sidibe, whose work chronicled youth life in post-colonial West Africa, will be exhibiting previously unseen images at Lichfield Studios in London from March 11th—April 16th.

(vi@ Black Nerds Network)

RESPECT. contributor Barron Claiborne, who took one of the most enduring—and, arguably, most iconic—pics of the King of New York, just a few days before he died, made this gun mosiac of the Notorious B.I.G. shortly after learning about the rapper’s death. You can read more about Barron’s experience with B.I.G. here.

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.