Vikki Tobak brings 'hip-hop's Mona Lisa' to Abu Dhabi in Contact High exhibit

Manarat Al Saadiyat currently playing host to the show

THE IMAGES PORTRAY some of hip-hop’s most legendary names including Snoop Dogg, Aaliyah, Salt-N-Pepa, and the Notorious B.I.G. Each photo resonates with fearlessness, or a pioneering spirit present behind the subjects’ eyes, capturing young artists on the cusp of a movement. Abu Dhabi community arts hub Manarat Al Saadiyat is currently playing host to ‘Contact High: A Visual History of hip-hop’ curated by American journalist, producer and author of an eponymous book Vikki Tobak. Transporting the show outside the US for the first time in partnership with local cultural and lifestyle platform Sole, 150 pieces by over 60 photographers including Janette Beckman, Jorge Peniche and Martha Cooper provide unrivalled insights into many of the world’s most lauded stars. Tobak tells us more.

How would you describe this exhibition to someone who rarely visits shows?

It feels amazing to have this exhibition travel. When the team at Sole and Manarat Al Saadiyat approached me with the idea, I could not have said yes fast enough. Hip-hop’s visual culture is now a global phenomenon that touches on everything from identity to street style and I love seeing all the visitors at the exhibition just really enjoying and being inspired.

As the curator, what theme did you want running through the show?

Hip-hop is so inspiring and so rich in history, I wanted this show to be more than just cool pictures of rappers. As a woman author and curator, I wanted the focus on women to be a priority. Today, the success of female artists represents a significant shift in the culture, revealing there are fewer limitations for women than ever before. Nowadays, women are more empowered. They can move through the world and operate however they want. More than 45 years after hip hop got its start in the Bronx, a new wave of women are dominating the charts and challenging the hypermasculine culture by embracing their agency. Artists like Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, City Girls, and Doja Cat are changing the game. Also artists like Nicki Minaj and Salt-N-Pepa, who are all represented in the exhibition. One thing I’m especially proud of is how many women photographers we have in this show: Angela Boatwright, Lisa Leone, Sophie Bramly, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Sue Kwon, and Sheila Pree Bright, Ravie B among others.

Are shows such as this one a dream given the amount of pre-existing public interest?

Absolutely, whenever there’s a unifying force like hip-hop culture that speaks to a universal audience, it’s a dream come true. But it also comes with a big responsibility to tell the right story and celebrate the complexity of the culture. Visitors see the story unfold from a voice of a community to a voice for the world.

As a journalist what stories do you hope visitors take away from the exhibition?

I wanted to tease out these deeper layers, the spaces where hip-hop was born and took place and took shape. Ancillary characters, as well as neighbourhoods — whether it’s Nas in Queensbridge, A$AP Rocky in Harlem or Kendrick Lamar at Tam’s Burgers in Compton — are as important as the artists themselves. I also hope visitors will reflect on the amazing documentarians who pointed their cameras at hip-hop when it was still a subculture. I want to highlight the photographers, who, like their muses in many cases, were young, black and unknown when they captured the historic images.

Given you also wrote a book on the subject, which collection of images speaks to you most?

When I set out to do this project, I wanted to celebrate hip-hop’s visual legacy. People always knew what hip-hop sounded like but what did it look like? And who was documenting the culture’s rise from the star?

Barron Claiborne’s ‘King of New York’ image of Biggie Smalls is probably the most recognised image in hip-hop. I like to call it ‘hip-hop’s Mona Lisa’. I love this image because it has a deep story: at the time it was taken, Barron wasn’t exactly known for photographing rappers. When Biggie showed up at his studio near Wall Street for a Rap Pages magazine shoot. He felt images of rappers had been cliché, and Claiborne “wasn’t interested in stereotypical negative imagery of black people”.

To him, the rapper was “a West African king,” and he wanted him portrayed as regal in the photos. The photo was about portraying an artist in a lasting way and pushing viewers to look deeper. It’s is about hip-hop, but it’s also beyond that. This was simply about photographing Biggie as the King of New York. He is depicted as an almost saint-like figure.

It’s a fascinating narrative, but then you look at the contact sheet and it gets even better. There’s a frame on the contact sheet (pictured above) showing a crowned Biggie, head cocked to his left, bearing a grin so bright it’s blinding. That one shot of Biggie smiling on the contact sheet – for people who knew Biggie, whenever they see that, ‘that’s the Biggie I know’... not the stern one on the album and Rap Pages magazine cover.

To look back on certain photographers and iconography and see this vast archive of imagery tells an important, powerful story. Before hip-hop became popular worldwide, the photographers in this book were taking pictures and documenting the nascent art form.

Are you surprised by the Middle East’s appetite for the content?

Not at all. I love how open to culture the Middle East audience is. I started coming to Sole DXB in Dubai a few years ago and it’s my absolute favourite thing. I’m so inspired by the people who have a global yet local view of culture and really remix that in the way they look and express themselves.

Which one image would you take home if you could?

That’s a tough one, it’s like asking me to pick a favourite child. I guess if I really had to pick, it would be Janette Beckman’s Salt-N-Pepa image. I just love how regal and confident the women look and the outfits they’re wearing are by Dapper Dan, who’s a legend in his own right.

What made you take a personal interest in hip-hop and its portrayal?

Growing up an immigrant kid in a traditionally African-American city like Detroit, music became a part of my identity. My family emigrated from Kazakhstan to Detroit when I was five years old and I started school not speaking English. It was the music on early Detroit radio like Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin and early house music that gave me a window into what I came to understand as America. It defined my understanding of culture and the role music played in creating narratives and history. You can say hip-hop defined who I was, like so many young kids across the world.

In the early 1990s at 19 years old, I moved to New York from Detroit and got a job at Payday Records/Empire Management. At that time, Payday represented some of the most important names in underground hip-hop: Jeru the Damaja, Masta Ace, Mos Def’s first group, Jay-Z’s first singles deal. But Gang Starr is what the label was really known for. I worked with them as director of publicity and marketing when they were recording Hard To Earn, making sure they sounded and looked right in the media. I would accompany them on all their shoots, their interviews, and I got immersed in that world. I toured with them, I travelled the world with them, and learned what it was like to see the images being created along the way be put out into the world. After the label, I became a music and culture journalist. Later on, when I started working as a producer for CNN and CBS and went deeper into photojournalism, the dots started to connect. I became really interested in the way organisations treat their archives, and thought about hip-hop imagery, how all these years later we have this vast archive, but, we don’t have the stories behind what was happening within the culture at that time.