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After studying photography at Central Saint Martins and the London College of Communication, Janette Beckman<\/strong>, like any young photographer set loose in the world, needed something to take pictures of.<\/p>\nAs it turned out, the London-born Beckman<\/strong> didn\u2019t have to go far. It was the mid-1970s, and she happened to have found herself in what would become one of the most cinematic cultural moments of the last half-century: London\u2019s burgeoning punk scene. The city\u2019s streets and its snarling inhabitants became her canvas and subjects.<\/p>\n\u201cPunk was just starting to happen,\u201d Beckman tells me. \u201cThere were no jobs, and the British economy was terrible. Working-class kids were rebelling. Johnny Rotten was singing, \u201cNo future.\u201d Punks, mods, two-tones, skinheads\u2014the kids on the street, their D.I.Y. fashion and music shocked the stiff British-bourgeois sensibilities. Fashion and art have always come from the streets.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So Beckman<\/strong> did what photographers do\u2014she took out her camera and began capturing one of contemporary popular culture\u2019s most enduring and influential scenes, in iconic images you\u2019ve no doubt seen in books and magazines, on album covers, and in galleries. And while many artists\u2019 legacies were cemented during that single period in London, Beckman<\/strong> was on the verge of a second act, which would lead to her becoming one of the great cultural documentarians of her generation. It was a Christmas miracle.<\/p>\n\u201cI moved to New York City in 1983,\u201d she says. \u201cI came to visit friends at Christmas. They lived in an old artist-loft building on Franklin Street, right by the Mudd Club. I started to get work. It was an exciting time, taking photographs during the day, going out to clubs at night, ending up at Dave\u2019s Corner, on Canal and Broadway, for hot dogs and egg creams at two\u00a0A.M.<\/span>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd while Dave\u2019s is long gone, a\u00a0ghost of downtown past, Beckman<\/strong> never left. Instead, she turned her camera to the budding hip-hop scene, which had begun making its way from the surrounding outer boroughs of its birth and adolescence to the streets and nightclubs of downtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n\u201cJust like the punk movement in the U.K., a new cultural movement was coming from the streets,\u201d Beckman<\/strong> says. \u201cThe difference to me was that rapping, D.J.-ing, break dancing, and graffiti seemed to have so much positive energy.<\/p>\n\u201cI was working for small record labels like Sleeping Bag <\/strong>and Def Jam<\/strong>, photographing their new artists like Run-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, and LL Cool J<\/strong>\u2014musicians at the start of their careers,\u201d Beckman<\/strong> continues. \u201cRap was still underground. MTV didn\u2019t play it. Neither did most of the radio stations.\u201d Fast-forward almost 40 years, and hip-hop\u2014not just the music but the culture and style surrounding it, which has been a part of its DNA since the beginning\u2014is<\/em>\u00a0youth culture and style.<\/p>\n\u201cHip-hop is truly authentic, from the streets, a cultural movement,\u201d Beckman<\/strong> says. \u201cIt covers music, poetry, art, dance, and fashion. Break dancing is going to be an Olympic sport in 2024. Rap is bigger than rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. Sneaker culture is huge. And then there are designers like Dapper Dan, who are getting recognition, and collaborating with brands like Gucci.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBeckman<\/strong> wasn\u2019t just taking pictures of young rappers and other downtown artists, such as those seen in this portfolio. She wasn\u2019t simply documenting and freezing a moment in time. She was pushing back on Johnny Rotten\u2019s nihilistic declaration of \u201cNo future.\u201d She was showing us the future, and this was it.<\/p>\nSource: airmail.news<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After photographing London\u2019s nascent punk scene, Janette Beckman moved to New York to chronicle hip-hop\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pG6fW-J23","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"Afros\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blackouthiphop.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Afros.jpeg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1\")
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