Walking Tour with Vikki Tobak & Janette Beckman

Saturday, April 27th | 5PM

Meet at Info Booth West

All walking tours are free and are open to all.

 

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.

British-born photographer Janette Beckman began her career at the dawn of punk rock working for music magazines The Face and Melody Maker. She shot bands including The Clash, The Specials, Boy George, Ramones, as well as three Police album covers.

Drawn to the underground hip-hop scene, she moved to NYC in 1983 and photographed pioneers such as Run DMC, Slick Rick, Salt-N-Pepa, Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J and more.

Janette has published four books : Made in the UK: The Music of Attitude 1977-1983, The Breaks: Stylin’ and Profilin’ 1982-1990, El Hoyo Maravilla and in 2018, The Mash Up also by Cey Adams, a collection of her Hip Hop photographs reinterpreted by legendary graffiti artists.

Her work has been exhibited 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, Marseille Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe, and the Tokyo Nakamura Keith Haring Collection

She lives and works in New York City for clients including Levi’s, Dior and Interview.

She is represented by the Fahey Klein Gallery.

 

Vikki Tobak is the author of Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop. She is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The Fader, Complex, Mass Appeal, Paper, i-D, The Detroit News, Vibe, The Undefeated and many others. She is a former producer and columnist for CBS, CNN, Bloomberg News, 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 AG, Jeru and other hip-hop legends of the golden era. Vikki is also 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 National Gallery of Art, SXSW, The Schomburg Center, Library of Congress, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.