Chi Modu People Interview by Holger Homann Photos by Chi Modu 6 6 “What kind of gangsta rapper has a stylist? A stylist?!” - Ice T HH In your career as a photographer, you’ve had the chance to capture the steady rise of hip-hop culture from almost its beginning for almost three decades, and shot portraits of the genre’s most famous figures including Biggie, Tupac, Nas, ODB, and many others. When did all this start and how did you get so close to them? CM Well, my first work as a photographer was freelance work at the Amsterdam News—a small newspaper in Harlem, New York in the early ‘90s. I think it was like 1990. And that was right around the time that the founders from Harvard moved down to New York and started to bring The Source Magazine to a more national level. I went down to the magazine and had a visit with them. And they didn’t really have anybody on staff that actually really understood photography. At that time, I was already printing my own prints in my own dark room, so I was really ready to rock. This is now post-college. I went to Rutgers University in New Jersey, I moved up towards New York City, which is when I started playing around with my own darkroom supplies and enlarger that I’d purchased. From there, my prints got better. I did the work at the newspaper, then I segued into The Source since they didn’t really have anyone that was at the ready. I had a beeper at the time. So if you called me I would show up. So I was basically the on-call guy for the magazine. And then the artists started to see me as the guy. So they knew if they would sit for my camera, cooperate, they’ll probably end up in the magazine. I was always pretty sound technically, and I brought a higher level of technical ability to the space, which I think lifted the whole thing up a bit. This was right around the early ‘90s. And then I had a run of about seven years of having my bit of time to shape the space visually and shape how people perceived hip hop. HH In regard to all those personal encounters, are there any that stand out as most memorable? CM It’s tough to single out any one. But you can imagine, most of them probably are memorable. We were young men and women in our 20s, and we were at the front end of this movement that no one really knew where it was going. But people knew it had a lot of energy. We were running free and running wild, but we were actually also producing something that ended up being the foundation for the multi-billion dollar industry of hip hop. It kind of rocked the whole globe. It was important not to get distracted by the enormity of what we were doing so the work would stay pure. So Tupac was always a good subject and quite cooperative and understood the camera. So it wasn’t hard to get him for photo shoots and to perform or just be himself and not perform. And it worked out well. Biggie was a good friend of mine because he’s from the east coast, so he would always come and cooperate. I did Snoop’s first album. So I definitely worked with a lot of these guys early in their career. I’d say all of them were actually quite memorable. HH Who was the most difficult to work with? CM As a photographer, you don’t really know what you’re dealing with when you roll up on a subject. So as far as difficult, everyone can be at times... Most people don’t really like having their picture taken. So it’s our job to make them comfortable and help them to relax. But it’s also our job to not leave without a photograph. So I had to bend a lot of people’s arms over the years to eventually do a picture after they said they weren’t going to when I arrived. The most difficult one was probably Mike Tyson, because I remember I showed up at his place in Youngstown, Ohio, and he was training for a fight. It must have been 1996 or so. And Mike showed up and said, “I’m not taking any pictures today.” And you can imagine what that’s like, right? I knew I was going to get him to take a picture no matter what. I softened him up with conversation, got him to sit down, we ate some food, we talked for a bit, he cooperated and I was able to get my images. We saw each other a year later and laughed about the experience and we ended up as friends. So I think that when subjects are difficult, it’s usually other things in their world that make them difficult. Photographers know not to take it personally, and adjust to whatever the challenges are in any situation, but more importantly, we must leave with a photograph. That’s priority one for a photographer. If you don’t leave with a photograph, you didn’t do your job. If you don’t do your job, you probably won’t be hired again. HH In these times when almost everybody seems to have the technology for taking photographs in their hands, what does one need, to be considered a photographer from your perspective? CM Well, the fact that cameras have become ubiquitous ... I actually like the fact that everybody has a camera because what it’s done for photography is it’s made people appreciate the skills required more, because more people now see how hard it is to do it. And it’s not really about the equipment; it’s always about how you see the world and your composition. You can get the technical aspects of photography behind you fairly quickly if you focus on them. But that’s not entirely what creates a good picture. A good picture still consists of the photographer deciding what stays or leaves the rectangle. I think that’s what people have learned now that they all have cameras. So to be a good photographer, I think you really have to know how to look in those four corners and make that decision in a millisecond of what you want in and what you want out, and then you press your shutter. Once you get that down, and the more often you’re able to do that and not just get lucky periodically, then, okay, now you’re a good photographer. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a camera phone, like a Sony a7, or a 4x5, it’s all still the same process. Light exposing film or exposing a sensor, timing, composition— that’s photography. HH What does a photo need, to become iconic? CM I think a number of things have to line up. I can really speak from a music photography space. There is something to be said about superstar artists who pass away at a young age, because they are preserved in the photographs that we have of them. So when people look at pictures of Tupac and pictures of Biggie, they use the word iconic around them because they haven’t been here for about 20-something years. But I think it’s not just the subject, but it’s the combination of the subject and how the photographer chose to portray them, because a lot of times people’s image is really how the photographer saw them. They’re the ones looking at the subject. So we look at you, and we decide when to press the shutter to capture you where you’re looking right. That’s kind of our job. We’re your mirror, in a way. If you are “that” person, we have to know how to see you as that and then press the shutter to capture you at your best. If you line those things up where you capture someone as they are, and that person to the public is a superstar or someone the public believes in—if you line all that up with a well-exposed image, that’s how you create THE REAL MCCOY
THE REAL MCCOY