‘IMPERFECT PERFECTION’
Rare images of hip-hop artists capture the person behind the persona
In an introduction to Vikki Tobak’s new visual history of hip hop, Contact High, the musician Questlove writes about his fascination with the split seconds that precede and follow the mesmerizing instant captured in a snapshot.
He marvels at what lies just outside a frame or how the story of an image can change dramatically if the camera angle is shifted by just a degree. If the perfect image captures what the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called the decisive moment, then Questlove is intrigued by what might be called the indecisive ones.
Those are the photos at the heart of Contact High, which looks at the unpublished images of hip-hop musicians over a period of more than 30 years.
Tobak, a longtime journalist steeped in the details of hip hop’s origin story, asked photographers to dig through their closets, open up dusty shoe boxes and pull out their old contact sheets — those pre-digital rough drafts. Before digital cameras allowed photographers to shoot endless frames, instantly see what had been captured and just as quickly delete an imperfect picture, they were constrained by film.
“You only had 36 shots to get it right,” Tobak said in a recent interview, describing the number of frames in a typical roll of film. “Developing film was expensive; going into the darkroom was expensive.”
The book’s collection of contact sheets reveals the care and consideration photographers put into each frame, the unavoidable mistakes they made and how they coaxed a public persona from a private person.
“Because you couldn’t see the photo right away on your phone, people weren’t so aware of controlling their image,” said Tobak, 46.
Photographer Lisa Leone describes visiting the recording studio where the rapper Nas was working on his debut album, Illmatic, in 1993. Her goal was to capture the striking sense of calm and purpose that was palpable in the room. She told Tobak, “I hung out for an hour before I ever picked up my camera — to get a feel for what was happening.”
Leone didn’t want to come in frantically shooting. She wanted her subject to get comfortable with her presence. He might not forget she was there, but he might eventually be convinced that she wasn’t an antagonistic intruder.
Like the other photographers in the book, Leone always aimed for authenticity — that is, a photo that delivers some kind of clarity or truth. In the world of glossy magazines, album covers and publicity stills, however, the photo that is ultimately chosen, touched up and published doesn’t always meet that standard.
The contact sheet is raw. It reveals the subject free of the fingerprints of stylists, publicists, managers and other assorted handlers. The pictures capture them before the era of Instagram, in which moments of pure honesty are rare.
“Everyone wants that imperfect perfection,” Tobak said. It’s the Iwoke-up-like-this syndrome, she added. Whether it’s a makeup-free Beyoncé on the cover of Vogue, a concert-tour behind-the-scenes documentary or one’s own reality show, intimacy is elusive. “You can’t help but feel the presence of the team,” Tobak said.
One of the most famous hip-hop images is that of Biggie Smalls, wearing a gold crown. Taken by Barron Claiborne in 1997, it depicts the rapper as regal, powerful and tough. Yet with the crown set just slightly off-centre and a thick gold chain around his neck, there’s also an element of informality and jaunty street swagger to the portrait.
The Notorious B.I.G. isn’t looking wholly inaccessible or unapproachable. The message is: Approach with caution.
On the contact sheet, there’s an outtake of the rapper smiling — not a grudging hint of emotion, but a full, toothy grin. Claiborne isn’t giving viewers a peek behind the scenes of a photo shoot; he’s offering nuance and dimension — a fuller understanding of someone who was more than his PR image, the record-label talking points, the tough-guy persona and, ultimately, his obituary.
Another well-known photograph shows a shirtless Tupac Shakur with Thug Life tattooed across his torso. In 1993, when Danny Clinch captured the image, the plan was for a more typical portrait — the rapper fully dressed and posing. But Clinch saw the tattoo as Shakur was changing from one outfit to another. “I don’t think I would have ever asked him to take off his shirt but when I noticed his Thug Life tattoo, I knew that would be a powerful image,” Clinch says in the book.
Pictures of Jay-Z taken over the years by different photographers highlight his evolution from a boastful young rapper with big aspirations to a mogul dealing with fame, wealth and outsized expectations — both cultural and social. In 1995, he is dressed in Bermuda shorts and a campshirt — like some Boca Raton retiree — and he is photographed by Jamil GS in front of a Lexus with a personalized licence plate and bottles of Cristal visible through the windshield. There are other poses from that shoot — in front of a yacht, framed by the twin towers in New York — all underscoring a journey toward material wealth.
By 2007, Jay-Z is photographed by Clinch in the style of a jazz artist standing behind a spit guard, microphones hanging off to the side, his face partially obscured by shadow. Clinch had 12 minutes to capture the image of a contemplative performer, alone. There’s no expensive stuff visible — no markers of success except the man himself.
Many of the photographers who contributed to Tobak’s book came from the very community they were documenting. They weren’t, she said, trained photographers. “They weren’t on an assignment. They weren’t getting paid. They were young, and they looked like their subject: black and brown. They weren’t necessarily coming from a pedigreed world.”
They were freelancers shooting what was around the corner or down the block. They were not journalistically objective, but they were wholly present.