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:

The post Alfamega + Gucci Mane + Mims x Zach Wolfe appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

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.

The post Three 6 Mafia + T-Pain + Hurricane Chris x Zach Wolfe appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Yesterday, Team T.I. unleashed the cover for his seventh studio album, King Uncaged, due out August 17th. While we’re not pleased with ourselves for going after the obvious “unleashed” wordplay in the previous sentence, we’re pretty self-satisfied at being able to get the rapper’s thoughts behind the cover, shot by world renown photographer Warwick Saint:

I’m known as “the King.” Although it’s disputed by some, concurred by most, there ain’t no disputing that lion—that is what it is. So I went and told them, “Get me as close as you can to a lion.” He had a trainer holding him on a chain. They took the chain out [in post-work]. It really went down. I wanted to pet him. I said, “Let me get hands on.” They were like, “No. We could only let you do but so much.” So I did as much as they would allow me to do.

I figured we had to do some kind of slick and meaningful imagery to say the obvious without doing the obvious. I tried to flip it as much as I could. I wanted it to be a a busy city street. My original idea was to lock down Times Square and let me and the lion do the same thing right there, but we couldn’t quite pull that off; they said it had to be in controlled environment. They tried to do a artsy kind of drawing. It looked good, but it didn’t serve my purpose—it was just a painting. I figured, if it got to be a controlled environment, we may as well just keep it all the way simple make it black and white, white background, me, him, cool chair.

On the cover’s lack of typesetting:

It says itself; it’s self-explanatory. I don’t have to write “King;” I don’t have to write “Uncaged.” Everything is right there. It’s said. [My record label, Atlantic] knows by now to rock with me. We done did this enough times before. On the King album when I didn’t really want to show my face, that wasn’t really looked at as the ideal move to make, but I feel like iconic imagery speaks for itself. You ain’t got to beat people in the head with what you’re trying to say. Everything understood don’t need to be explained.

After the jump: A commercial which proves that king of rap was not selling wolf tickets about standing next to the king of beasts.

The post T.I. Wanted to Close Down Times Square for His Album Cover appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

PHOTO: Reggie Casagrande/Corbis Outline.

Today, Reggie Casagrande, aside from being one of the only women we know named Reggie, is the founder of online enterprises Lipsticktracez and  theFETE—where photographers, designers and other cultural architects congregate to share ideas and display works. But, in 2000, she was a newbie photographer for the Alternative Press on assignment to shoot a shy and charismatic new artist named Eminem. Had she known he was going to be so big, she probably would have brought more film.

Reggie Casagrande:

I probably did about three or four setups with him while we were there—I only had him for about an hour. It was at the Paramount Hotel in New York, in the theater district. During the time he had a lot of weird death threats on him, so he was really incognito in public, traveling with entourage, etc. Now everyone travels with an entourage but then it was kind of unusual for a young artist to do that. We had a couple of rooms an we shot in the hall—it was mellow, quiet, he’s pretty shy—and then we went back into the suite where his crew was and he just started rapping and totally freestyling. I think it was his way of relaxing and unwinding and I just shot it.

It was when he was still relatively new to the game, but you could totally sense the charisma about him. He was very charismatic and, when he just had this verbal outpouring of song, kind of amazing. I didn’t realize then how amazing it was. It was kind of like, Okay… because you never know when you shoot a new artist if they’re gonna go on to become iconic or if they’re just gonna go away. He was extremely talented, very charismatic, sweet, charming, polite—all the things you want in someone [as a photographer]. There was no drama. And to this day I’m still regretting that I didn’t take more pictures of him because I didn’t have much time. But I could have probably pushed for more; that happens sometimes. I’m sure you hear that from other photographers: Ugh, if I’d only did this setup!

I really wanted to take him outside; I probably could have pushed for it. I think now, in hindsight, if I ever had an opportunity like that with a young artist again, I would push for the shot I really, really wanted to do. But I kinda was like, Oh, you know, he’s comfortable in here, so let’s just shoot in here. But I really wanted to take him out on the street and shoot him with his hood [on] and all of his crew around him, but it probably would have caused an uproar.

This was over ten years ago and I was alone with just my assistant and him. There was no real crew. This was in the beginning of my career, too, so it was one of those things: There’s no budget, we want you to shoot this new artist, go do it. I had heard that there was a lot of talk in the clubs and on the streets that there were a lot “death threats” against him, but I didn’t really want to talk about that with him because I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable or anything. I could sense that he was already kind of uncomfortable with fame, so to speak, but he seemed totally happy to do the shoot. [He] had to be directed a little bit, but he was game. He probably would have sat there and just kept shooting, but it was also when I was shooting film and didn’t really have any money to shoot it, so was like, I only have eight or nine rolls of film, so I’m gonna shoot that and that’s it—instead of really, really shooting as much as possible before the celebrity leaves. But hindsight is 20/20, right?

The post Eminem x Reggie Casagrande appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Part 1

50 Cent:

Chris Buck: When we did that shoot with him, he was promoting his new record—I guess he was kinda promoting the movie, too—the movie based on his life. The movie I think had more sensitivities to his vulnerabilities and his background, so I think that was one reason he was open to doing something that was less tough-looking. But also his new single, I think it was actually called “Lollipop” [ed note: “Candy Shop”], so that’s why we suggested this picture, ’cause it was a way to show him being a little more vulnerable, a little more playful, but also it would tie into something of his work, so we knew he’d be kinda cool with it.

I find it a little bit limiting that especially African-American men are shown as being tough and threatening all the time. Obviously they have a whole range of emotions and experiences and I want to show more of that in my work. I find it much more interesting. When I deal with African-American men, I don’t find them threatening. I find them all kinds of things: I find them friendly or vulnerable or curious or whatever—all kinds of emotions and experiences with them, so I want to show that in my work. As an artist, I feel like that’s kind of important.

Chuck D:

Chris Buck: This was taken in 1991. I’d actually photographed Public Enemy twice before that. I was a big fan; I was a pretty obsessed fan when they broke. I had their album Yo! Bum Rush The Show, and then their second album came out which was It Takes a Nation of Millions [to Hold Us Back], which I was so surprised to have the subsequent album to be so much better even than their first album. I was super-excited and I became a totally obsessed fan. In fact, I did a photo session with the band at the time in ’88 when they played in Toronto and it was a super privilege and I was super excited about it. I photographed them a couple of times after and the third time was in Washington, DC and we’re shooting in the hotel room. There was a line about “they crucified me like Jesus” in one of the songs [Ed. note: “Crucifixion ain’t no fiction/ So called chosen frozen/ Apology made to who ever pleases/ Still they got me like Jesus” from “Welcome to the Terrordome,” 1990] and I was like We should go and shoot at the White House. Flavor Flav said, “It should be the Black House!” And Chuck was like, Nah, this actually a good idea. Let’s do this. So we all walked over, the whole group and me. It was only a couple of blocks from where we shooting so we all walked over and we were on, I guess that’s the South Lawn, I’m not sure. We went to shoot there and we shot the whole band first and I say “Chuck, I want to shoot you alone as if you’re being crucified on the fence.” He kinda looked at me and he was like, Okay. He started posing there and he started counting because he was like, I’ll give you 15 seconds. He started counting and as I’m shooting the frames, I had to shoot when his mouth was closed because he was actually counting out loud. It was pretty funny. As we were shooting, I was giving him direction like, Put your head down a little more—’cause obviously I’m trying to make him look like Jesus, how Jesus would have his head down on the cross. I’m giving him more direction like, Raise your left hand a bit. Literally, he counted off 15 seconds and then he was done.

I guess because it was pre-9/11 that probably made it a little easier. People are walking around the White House and taking pictures all the time. As along as you’re not trying to climb the fence or break the security zone, I think you’re totally fine. The police might have come by, but I think there’s an aspect of free speech that even the police understand—you’re allowed to make a statement and they’re okay with that.

I went home and I had to print it really, really carefully because I had to burn down the background a lot to get the rich tones to match the tones on him and everything. And the funny thing is that he was kind of giving me a hard time when we were shooting it but he loved it and he actually used this picture on the back cover of his biography so I was really pleased that he liked it. And I was really proud of it. Often times people take pictures of hip-hop artists that are just very straight forward but I like to do something that a little more conceptual and obviously I like it to be appropriate and I thought this really was in terms of the politics of Public Enemy and what they’re all about. I was really excited that he kinda felt that I understood what they’re doing.

I tell the story of how impatient he was, but the fact is they’re actually very respectful and they’re really a lot of fun to work with. The irony is the person who was the most fun and most relaxed to shoot with was Professor Griff—and he was course the one that got into all that trouble. The first time I shot them was before they got into trouble for the anti-semitic comments. He was actually the most relaxed guy and it’s unfortunate he had to be pushed out of the band. I think they were quite right to push him out of the band. I’m a great friend to Jewish people so I think he really misspoke in that sense. But it’s a shame because I think maybe he didn’t know enough about that stuff—you know Jewish people have often been very friendly to Blacks and Civil Rights, so it’s kind of a shame he didn’t know more about that. There was a full story about the Jews and Black people but anyway he was a very nice guy and I was saddened when he had to be kick out of the band. Obviously these things are very complex.

But Public Enemy were very cool to deal with and I shot them many times because I was such a fan. I really enjoy working with hip-hop artists in general because they of course, I’m fan of them music and the culture, but also I also think that more than rock musicians they understand the show business aspect of having your picture taken. Rock bands often will just show up just regular clothes and just stand there, whereas hip-hop artists—not all of them but oftentimes they understand that there’s an as aspect to, as Frank Sinatra said, “You’re not just an artist, you’re also a star.” I think that hip-hop artists understand that aspect.

Nas:

Chris Buck: Shooting with Nas was definitely a little challenging. He’s a very nice guy but him and I just thought differently about how we would do things. One of the things I like in pictures is vulnerability. For me I wanted show vulnerability with him, and this picture I feel shows it, but most pictures we had didn’t really have that. The fact is he worked with me and we got great shots. I’m very proud of this picture. It’s interesting because the “N” is supposed to represent the name of his album that he was putting out, but what’s nice is it also represents his name, so it has that kind of longevity that can go beyond that particular album.

If you don’t mind me saying so, I actually had a problem with him naming the album that. Obviously I believe in free speech, and I believe in genuine intellectual discussion, but when I read different interviews with him, he said different things about his reasons for calling it that in every interview. If you’re gonna use a word like that that has such historical complexity, I think that you have to have clarity about why you’re doing it. In the end, I got the impression that he was using it for reasons that were provocative in the commercial sense rather than in the intellectual sense. And I’m disappointed because he’s obviously a smart guy and I actually enjoy his music. I love his song “Black Republican”—I think it’s an awesome song. I’m more politically conservative myself so i think it was cool he did a song called “Black Republican,” but I was disappointed that he couldn’t really justify why he was using that word. Even when he did the Hip-Hop is Dead stuff, that again was a very interesting concept, but in a similar way,  in the end, he couldn’t really talk about it in ways that were that interesting.

I like to leave [the chain] open-ended. You can take it for what you want. Because it was supposed to be connected to the word “nigger,” I think that’s where I was thinking of it, like the idea of the burden of the history, which I do think is legitimate. I think that’s one of the great reasons, even though I don’t particularly support Barack Obama’s policies, I do think there’s a value of having an African-American President, because if it can help to ease some of the historical pain of slavery. As a Canadian, I come into the United States and I see that the history of slavery is something that’s not really talked about [and] race in general. Obviously it’s changed since Barack Obama came on the scene but race in general really wasn’t talked about much and I thought it was kind of a shame. Certainly the history of slavery wasn’t talked about and I think that’s one of the reasons why Black people felt like racism was still a very strong element of the culture. I think the election of Barack Obama showed that racism isn’t as powerful—I’m trying to get the right word—isn’t as overwhelming in the culture as people assumed it was. Obviously he was mostly voted for by white people or he wouldn’t become President otherwise. But I do think the lack of discussion on slavery is something that is a problem. There’s more discussion on the Jewish Holocaust in the country than there is on slavery. I think the reason why is the Jewish Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans, not by Americans. It’s much harder for Americans to talk about something that they did. I don’t know if you want to get in this kind of political discussion. I’m sorry, I just find this stuff interesting.

In the context of the story, that’s what it was in my mind: the burden of the history of African-Americans in slavery. In the larger context I don’t mind it being ambiguous. Maybe it’s the persona of Nas on Nas, maybe holding him down or being a burden on him.

Missy Elliott:

Chris Buck: I had this idea for a long time—and Missy Elliott, for some reason, I guess because of her interesting kind of futuristic ideas and concepts, I thought she might be into this—to take someone and put silver makeup on them. What we did was we put silver make up on her and then we photographed her in black & white so that the silver aspect is very subtle. It gives a certain feel to her skin and to the texture in the picture but because it’s in black & white it’s not that obvious. It’s not like you’re seeing a colored background or her eyebrows are different color or something like that. When the magazine ran it, it was super cool.They ran it with silver ink, silver and black. You can’t see that here, but it was really cool when we did it.

She had her own makeup artist and he was really into it; he was the one that did the bejeweling on her eyebrows and stuff. She loved it, she was super into it. The crazy part about that shoot was we did at a restaurant in New York just because we wanted a certain background, and the guy at the restaurant who I got the permission from didn’t get permission from his boss, so halfway through the shoot, the boss came in and freaked out a totally made a huge scene and kicked us out. Missy was very cool and we just looked at each other and kinda laughed and we’re like “let’s just wrap this up now.” It was very funny. It’s one my favorite stories about a shoot because of the chaos that happened. Everyone on the set was very cool but it was just kinda funny because we ended up being thrown out of the place halfway through the shoot.

PREVIOUSLY: Chris Buck x RESPECT. Mag | Part 1

The post Chris Buck x RESPECT. Mag | Part 2: 50 Cent, Chuck D, Nas + Missy Elliott appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

I can remember vividly growing up in the suburbs of Cleveland. I had just purchased a new boom box with money from cutting lawns and raking leaves. My friend named Joe Mantey, who I knew well because alphabetically we were always somehow next to each other in grade school, said he was coming over with this RUN DMC cassette he just bought called “Raising Hell.” I remember hearing one tune in particular that changed my world…

More words and pics here.

The post Jam Master Jay x Jonathan Mannion appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

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.

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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…

The post Chris Buck x RESPECT. Mag | Part 1 appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.