Vikki Tobak

Last updated
Vikki Tobak
BornAlmaty, Kazakhstan [1]
OccupationJournalist, author, curator [2] [3]
Website
Vikki Tobak on Twitter

Vikki Tobak is a culture journalist, author, independent curator, and producer born in Soviet-era Kazakhstan who was raised in the United States. She reports about and creates content regarding politics, arts, social justice and music photography. [4] [5]

Contents

Early life

Tobak's family immigrated to Detroit, Michigan in the late 1970s when she was five years old. In an interview given to journalist Ben Merlis for the online magazine udiscovermusic.com she commented on her early musical experience, “I landed in Detroit – a predominantly black city, predominantly music-oriented city, where music is everywhere you go. You hear Motown, you hear Aretha and Stevie Wonder, that was my impression of what America was from the start." [6] In Cold War America, some of her white classmates often treated her with mistrust, whereas the black community, she says, welcomed her with open arms.

It was in Detroit that she immersed herself into early hip hop culture. New York groups like Public Enemy and EPMD were writing about creating identity and demanding respect. The movement inspired her to be closer to the pulse. As a teenager, Tobak moved from Detroit to New York City where, after working for a time as a cashier and doorwoman at the nightclub called Nell's, she got an entry-level job at Payday Records, the label known for such hip hop performers as Gang Starr, Guru, DJ Premier, Jeru the Damaja, and Mos Def. [1] After just a few months at the company she was promoted to marketing and PR director, which included organizing photography sessions for the artists. She continued to work in the music industry throughout the nineties, experiences that gave her a behind-the-scenes perspective on the rise of hip hop culture. Her insider knowledge on the subject segued into work as a music journalist and also as a music photography curator. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

Career

In 2018, she authored the book Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop (published by Penguin Random House/Clarkson Potter). [12] The book features analog photography sessions of hip hop legends complemented by the photographers' personal stories about the images. The Contact prints featured span from the very beginnings of the Hip hop genre until the end of the regular use film photography for music pictures (2007). The book was considered one of Time Magazine's 25 Best Photobooks of 2018. [13] and the New Yorker described the publication as a "Wondrous tribute to the way hip-hop overturned not just the sound of culture but also ways of seeing." [14]

In 2019, The Annenberg Space For Photography in Culver City, California hosted an exhibit entitled Contact High: A Visual History of Hip Hop, based upon the contents of the book in association with the museum's 10th anniversary. The exhibit was curated by Tobak along with creative direction from hip hop artist and journalist Fab Five Freddy. [15] [16] [17] The exhibition traveled to ICP (International Center of Photography) in New York, MAS in Abu Dhabi and The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle.

In an interview given to Quartz regarding the exhibit, Tobak stated (specifically in reference to the photographers' contact sheets), “It’s a rare glimpse into their process and allows viewers to see so much more than the final product". She said "The 80’s and 90’s were a time when photographers had greater access to musicians, coinciding with the dominance of music magazines and album cover and magazine cover art”. [18]

In 2022, she authored "Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History" published by TASCHEN. The book inspired the exhibit curated by Tobak at The American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In 2023, she authored “The Streets Win: 50 Years of Hip-Hop Greatness” published by Rizzoli in collaboration with by LL COOL J.

Her articles have appeared in The Fader, Complex, Mass Appeal, The Undefeated, Paper Magazine, ID Magazine, The Detroit News, and Vibe, and she was formerly the producer and columnist for CBS Market Watch, CNN, Bloomberg News, TechTV, and other media organizations. She was 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, VOLTA New York, Photoville, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. [2] [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fab Five Freddy</span> American artist

Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He gained wider recognition in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.

<i>The Infamous</i> 1995 studio album by Mobb Deep

The Infamous is the second studio album by the American hip hop duo Mobb Deep. It was released on April 25, 1995, by BMG, RCA Records and Loud Records. The album features guest appearances by Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Q-Tip. It was largely produced by group member Havoc, with Q-Tip also contributing production while serving as the mixing engineer. Most of the leftover songs from the album became bonus tracks for Mobb Deep's The Infamous Mobb Deep album (2014).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janette Beckman</span> British documentary photographer

Janette Beckman is a British documentary photographer who has worked in London, New York and Los Angeles. Beckman describes herself as a documentary photographer. While she produces a lot of work on location, she is also a studio portrait photographer. Her work has appeared on records for the major labels, and in magazines including Esquire,Rolling Stone,Glamour,Italian Vogue,The Times,Newsweek,Jalouse,Mojo and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ricky Powell</span> American photographer (1961–2021)

Ricky Powell was an American photographer who documented popular culture including hip hop, punk rock, graffiti, and pop art. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, The Village Voice, TIME, Newsweek, VIBE, The Source, Rolling Stone, among other publications. His photographs included candid portraits of artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Madonna, in addition to many other popular culture artists and other common people. His photographs were included in the books The Rap Photography of Ricky Powell! (1998), The Rickford Files: Classic New York Photographs (2000), Frozade Moments: Classic Street Photography of Ricky Powell (2004), and Public Access: Ricky Powell Photographs (2005) and were exhibited both domestically and internationally.

Bill Adler is an American music journalist and critic. Since the late 1960s, he has worked in the music business in a variety of capacities, including as a record store clerk, radio disc jockey, critic, publicist, biographer, record label executive, documentary filmmaker, museum consultant, art gallerist, curator, and archivist. He is known best for his tenure as director of publicity at Def Jam Recordings (1984–1990), the period of his career to which the critic Robert Christgau was referring when he described Adler as a "legendary publicist".

Erin Grace Trieb is an American photojournalist. Trieb focuses on international social issues and is currently based in Istanbul, Turkey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Levine</span> American multi-disciplinary visual artist.

Laura Levine is an American multi-disciplinary visual artist. She is best known for her portraits of artists from the punk, early hip-hop, New Wave, No Wave, and the early downtown New York City music scene. Levine's work includes iconic images of Björk, R.E.M., the Clash, Afrika Bambaataa, the Ramones, the Beastie Boys, Iggy Pop, and Madonna, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moritz Neumüller</span> Curator, educator, and writer in photography and new media

Moritz Neumüller is a curator, educator and writer in the field of photography and new media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Odette England</span> Australian-British photographer

Odette England is an Australian-British photographer whose artwork has been exhibited internationally. She often uses family photographs in her practice.

Brian Cross, better known as B+, is an Irish photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He is a co-founder of Mochilla, a film and music production company. He predominantly photographed the Los Angeles' hip hop scene in the 1990s as well as helped create album art for a number of artists including Q-Tip, Eazy-E, Damian Marley, DJ Shadow, and J Dilla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Benabib</span> American portrait photographer

Michael Benabib is an American portrait photographer, known for his portraits of David Bowie, Tupac Shakur, Sean Combs, and Keith Richards among others. Notable portrait photography of public figures include Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and Loretta Lynch. His work has appeared in publications including Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone, Vibe, ESPN magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR and Newsweek. His work was included to photography collections on display by The Smithsonian and MoMa.

<i>Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop</i> 2018 book by Vikki Tobak

Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is a 2018 photography book created and written by Vikki Tobak and ongoing exhibition series. The volume features contact prints from analog photography sessions of hip hop artists during roughly forty-years, from the beginnings of the genre in the late 1970s until the late 2000s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Annenberg Space for Photography</span> Exhibition space in the Century City in Los Angeles

The Annenberg Space for Photography was an exhibition space in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles' Westside. Founded in March 2009, it was dedicated to displaying photographic works, ranging from artistic to journalistic, using both traditional photographic prints and modern digital techniques.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barron Claiborne</span> American photographer and cinematographer

Barron Claiborne is an American photographer and cinematographer who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He began taking photographs at the age of ten. After moving to New York in 1989 he began assisting established photographers such as; Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Saint Claire Born, and Richard Numeroff. His photographic mentor, was Gordon Parks.

Adama Delphine Fawundu Adama Delphine Fawundu is an artist born in Brooklyn, NY the ancestral space of the Lenni-Lanape. She is a descendant of the Mende, Krim, Bamileke, and Bubi peoples. Her multi-sensory artistic language centers around themes of indigenization and ancestral memory. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora with photographer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn. – MFON is a book featuring the diverse works of women and non-binary photographers of African descent. Her works have been presented in numerous exhibitions worldwide. She is a Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophie Bramly</span> French TV producer and director

Sophie Bramly is a French photographer, television producer/director, digital pioneer, and author. She’s best known for the hip-hop photos she shot in New York in the early Eighties, the creation of hip-hop television show Yo! MTV Raps she produced and hosted for MTV Europe in the late 80s and early 90s, and the website and online community dedicated to female pleasure she established in Paris in 2008. This career has been described as “protean” in Le Figaro. In 2017 France's Ministry of Culture named Bramly a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Northside Hip Hop Archive (NSHHA) is a digital archive of Canadian hip hop culture from the 1980s and 1990s. NSHHA aims to preserve cultural artifacts from the pioneering years of the Canadian hip hop scene. This online archive digitizes oral histories, event flyers, posters, street magazines, album covers, newspaper articles, graffiti and analog recordings. Founded by Dr. Mark V. Campbell aka DJ Grumps, in 2010, NSHHA “take[s] seriously the accomplishments and hidden histories of Canadian hip hop and is interested in providing resources for future generations of hip hoppers.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melissa Haizlip</span> American filmmaker

Melissa Haizlip is an American film producer, director and writer most notable for her 2018 award-winning film, Mr. SOUL!. Haizlip won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Documentary for Mr. SOUL!.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ithaka (artist)</span> American multidisciplinary artist from California

Ithaka Darin Pappas, known professionally as Ithaka, is an American-born multidisciplinary artist of Greek ancestry who creates using music, writing, sculpture and photography. He has authored a collection of short stories, entitled Ravenshark Chronicles published in international magazines and periodicals, which have sometimes been the basis for his travel-oriented lyrical content. In a 2005 article for the magazine Waves, journalist Ricardo Macario described Ithaka as "The Miscellaneous Man". In a 2008 review of Ithaka's sixth album Saltwater Nomad, the online surf-culture platform Surfline stated that "the artist effortlessly traverses at ease between all of his choses mediums of expression [music, sculpture, writing and photography]", and that "his life's journey is a soulful balancing act somewhere between the worlds of euphoric creation and aquatic diversion."

<i>Rap Pages</i> American hip hop magazine

Rap Pages was an American music magazine, one of the first publications dedicated to hip hop. The first issue was released in October 1991. Originally published by Larry Flynt Publications, the magazine was closed in October 1999. It was sold to Timaj Publications in May 2000, who released several more issues, but by the end of 2000 stopped publication. Rap Pages set itself apart from other contemporary music magazines, particularly The Source, with its comprehensive coverage of West Coast hip hop artists, something they believed other publications lacked.

References

  1. 1 2 "The stories behind hip-hop's most iconic images". www.cnn.com.
  2. 1 2 "Profile - Vikki Tobak - The Authors Guild". www.authorsguild.net.
  3. ↑ Stuart, Gwynedd (18 April 2019). "Hip-Hop History Comes to Life in a Series of 120 Amazing Photos".
  4. ↑ LensCulture, Vikki Tobak. "Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop - Photographs courtesy of Contact High Project - Interview with Vikki Tobak by Cat Lachowskyj". LensCulture.
  5. ↑ "Rare Hip Hop Photographs Unearthed in New Book". PAPER. 18 October 2018.
  6. ↑ "About Us". 30 July 2023.
  7. ↑ "Contact High: The Story of Hip Hop Photography". BYT // Brightest Young Things. 18 November 2016.
  8. ↑ "The Daily Edit - Contact High Project". 29 November 2016.
  9. ↑ "Mass Appeal". Mass Appeal.
  10. ↑ "FotoFilm: Contact High: The Stories Behind Hip-Hop's Most Iconic Photographs". FotoDC.
  11. ↑ "Vikki Tobak - Complex". www.complex.com.
  12. ↑ "Contact High by Vikki Tobak - PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com.
  13. ↑ "TIME's Best Photobooks of 2018". Time.
  14. ↑ Hsu, Hua (1 November 2018). "How Hip-Hop Learned to Pose for the Camera". The New Yorker– via www.newyorker.com.
  15. ↑ EDT, Paula Froelich On 4/4/19 at 4:45 PM (4 April 2019). "A stark, new exhibit at the Annenberg take us on a visual historical journey of Hip-Hop". Newsweek.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  16. ↑ "The Sad Story Behind One of the Most Striking Images of Tupac". Complex.
  17. ↑ "'Contact High' Photography Exhibit in LA to Showcase Intimate Visual History of Hip-Hop". Billboard. 20 March 2019.
  18. ↑ Simon, Johnny (26 April 2019). "From Biggie to Kendrick Lamar: outtakes from hip-hop's most iconic photos". Quartzy.
  19. ↑ "Talk with Photo Curator Vikki Tobak". AU Photo Collective. 18 April 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.