![]() ![]() “Right away I said, ‘Do you know, if I became American people would qualify me as an African American, because my mum is North African’ – and they burst out laughing. The shoot took place near to Haddi’s home in the Los Angeles suburb of Venice Beach where Haddi made establishing common ground with Tupac - who had brought John Singleton along - his priority. “I didn’t know much about his music,” Haddi said on a Zoom call with CNN. In 1993, when Tupac and Haddi first met for the shoot, the then 22-year-old rapper was preparing for the release of his second film, John Singleton’s Poetic Justice, a romantic drama in which Janet Jackson plays his love interest. The son of Black Panther Party Members, Tupac’s own tumultuous start, moving with his mother and sister often and leaving home altogether as a teen, has been widely documented, with his strained maternal relationship informing the lyrics to 1995’s “Dear Mama”. ![]() By his own admission, the photographer was raised “in the worst scenario possible,” living in various orphanages in the suburbs of Paris, arriving at photography aged 18 after a chance encounter with another photographer while working as a hotel night porter. ![]() The shoot was kismet, Haddi told CNN in a phone interview - referring to the correlation between the pair’s early lives. His latest book “Tupac: The Legend”- released on the anniversary of the rapper’s death in Las Vegas in 1996, at the hands of an anonymous shooter - revisits the photographer’s portrait session with the star, originally commissioned for hip hop magazine “The Source”. During a career spanning more than 30 years, Haddi has photographed some of the world’s leading celebrities and models for magazines and advertising campaigns - work that has become the subject of numerous exhibitions and coffee table tomes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |