Join curator Vikki Tobak and photographer Janette Beckman as they share their exhibitions Contact High and The Mash Up, and visit many of their other favorites around Photoville LA.
Join curator Vikki Tobak and photographer Janette Beckman as they share their exhibitions Contact High and The Mash Up, and visit many of their other favorites around Photoville LA.
Presenters: Vikki Tobak Janette Beckman
Location: Annenberg Space for Photography
Join curator Vikki Tobak and photographer Janette Beckman as they share their exhibitions Contact High and The Mash Up, and visit many of their other favorites around Photoville LA.
Vikki Tobak is the author of “CONTACT HIGH: A Visual History Of Hip-Hop” (Clarkson Potter/Random House, 2018) and curator of the exhibition of the same name at the Annenberg Space for Photography (Spring 2019). She is an author and journalist whose writing has appeared in VIBE, COMPLEX, Mass Appeal, The FADER, PAPER, i-D, The Detroit News, and more.
She is a former producer and columnist for CBS, CNN, Bloomberg News, TechTV, and other leading media organizations. Vikki got her start as a culture editor for PAPER magazine before going on to work at Payday Records/Empire Management, working with groups including Gang Starr, Mos Def, Show and A.G., Jeru, and other hip-hop legends of the Golden Era.
Vikki is the founding curator of FotoDC’s film program, and served as the art commissioner/curator for the Palo Alto Public Art Commission in Silicon Valley. She has lectured about music photography at American University, the Schomburg Center, The Kennedy Center, SXSW, VOLTA NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Janette Beckman is a British-born photographer who now lives and works in New York. She began her career at the dawn of punk rock working for music magazines The Face and Melody Maker. She shot bands from The Clash to Boy George as well as three Police album covers.
Moving to NYC in 1983 she was drawn to the underground hip-hop scene and photographed pioneers such as Run DMC, Slick Rick, Salt’n’Pepa, Grand Master Flash and LL Cool J. Beckman has published five books: “Rap, Portraits & Lyrics of a Generation of Black Rockers,” “Made In The UK The Music of Attitude 1977-1983,” “The Breaks, Stylin’ and Profilin’ 1982- 1990,” “El Hoyo Maravilla” and “The MashUp: Hip Hop Photos Remixed by Iconic Graffiti Artists.”
Her work has been shown in galleries worldwide and is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum of the City of New York and the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe. She is represented by the Fahey Klein Gallery.
Beckman continues to chronicle sub-cultures of our generation as well as work on shoots for clients such as Levi’s, Dior and Apple.
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