A Better Story

Posted by Arianna Sullivan in Santa Fe

For Santa Fe-based documentary photographer David Scheinbaum, art is at its finest when related to social issues.
“To bring attention to some of the ills and inconsistencies of society,” says Scheinbaum, “is to use art at a higher level.”
Scheinbaum’s newest book, Hip-Hop: Portraits of an Urban Hymn, is a collection of photographs of hip hop artists that sheds light on the “ills and inconsistencies” of society’s general view of hip hop culture. Scheinbaum’s book depicts a community that, contrary to its reputation, connects art to social issues.
Scheinbaum first saw the discrepancy between mainstream media’s representation of hip hop culture and the actual work coming from hip hop artists 13 years ago when he drove his 12-year-old son and several of his friends to a hip hop concert at Albuquerque’s Sunshine Theater. Scheinbaum stuck around to see if the scene was appropriate for the kids and was struck by the positive atmosphere of the concert. He began to attend more shows, bringing his camera with him to try to capture the socially responsible, relevant and dynamic scene he witnessed again and again.

Scheinbaum noticed the positive atmosphere of hip hop concerts when he took his son to a concert in Albuquerque.
© 2012, Kendrick Lamar, Courtesy of the artist and Scheinbaum and Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, NM.

As Scheinbaum grew closer (both literally and figuratively—he eventually gained access to the stage and backstage areas for better shooting angles) to the hip hop performers who visited Albuquerque, he realized that not only is their art form inextricable from social issues, it is much more complex and involved than most outsiders realize.
Hip hop, like most creative cultures that begin at the fringe of society, arose out of a necessity to express the inequality being experienced by the marginalized. In an essay in Scheinbaum’s book, Gaye Theresa Johnson, an associate professor of black studies at UC Santa Barbara, explains that the art form originated as and still is “a serious source of articulated grievances,” that articulates “the expressed hopes and prescriptions for community progress,” with “animated, motivated, and deliberate commitment to sustaining social protest.” Scheinbaum sought to provide a visual representation of the energy toward social progress that he witnessed during performances by groups like The Roots, Public Enemy and Souls of Mischief.
From a technical standpoint, this required Scheinbaum to shoot in new ways. He used a camera with auto-focus capabilities to capture stills in a fast-moving environment, and experimented with color to catch a sense of the combination of sound and motion surrounding him.

Scheinbaum sought to photograph the energy, the sound and the motion of hip hop shows.
©2002, Professor Griff Public Enemy, Courtesy of the artist and Scheinbaum and Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, NM.

In an interview in the book he explains that, “I’m always trying to capture their eyes, because if you can’t access a person through their eyes, they remain, to me, anonymous.” The pictures Scheinbaum made were not celebrity shots; they were pictures that sought to show the humanity of hip hop that had been forgotten.

“If you can’t access a person through their eyes,” says Scheinbaum, “they remain, to me, anonymous.”
©2003, Prince Paul, Courtesy of the artist and Scheinbaum and Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, NM.

After 13 years of shooting, the book came together as an attempt to counterweight what he calls the “bad ink” that clouds the hip hop world. Johnson writes that “[black and brown people] deserve to hear and tell a better story about themselves as people and as a collective seeking freedom, a better story than the one that now dominates the discourse on youth and minority relationships.” Scheinbaum wanted to help create a better story with his images.
The need for a better story, both by and about hip hop, arose gradually as mainstream record companies embraced and sold what Johnson calls a “gangsta formula” that “repackaged rap’s depictions of black urban realities into a titillating buffet of hypermasculinity and glorified violence, relegating women artists to the margins.” With the industry’s rejection of innovative rappers who were pushing the art form in positive directions, Johnson explains, “the pairing of rap music and black humanity was, for all intents and purposes, lost.”
It was because of this loss that Scheinbaum focused not only on bringing out the humanity and energy of the subjects of his photos, but on depicting artists whose messages he believes in.
“The path to success is full of compromise,” he explains. “It’s hard, especially in music, to navigate the commercial world without compromising your ethics, so it’s a select group of people who have devoted their lives not only to their art but also to social change, without making that compromise.”
All of the artists in Scheinbaum’s book are “people with positive contributions to youth today—even if it’s questionable whether or not they have delivered positive messages in the past, they all are contributing positively right now.”
There are also many artists who Scheinbaum would like to have included in the book who aren’t in it—especially women, who are often degraded by or left out of mainstream media’s representations of hip hop.

Women are often underrepresented in mainstream media’s portrayals of hip hop.
©2009, Erykah Badu, Courtesy of the artist and Scheinbaum and Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, NM.

Still, the book is a step in the right direction toward showing the world some of the beauty and humanity that is alive in the hip hop world. Scheinbaum may not be able to hand out free books at the Sunshine, and the world “may not need another book about hip hop by David Scheinbaum,” as he says, but the fact that it exists is a counterweight to the misunderstanding of hip hop that mass media and the music industry has condoned. In the words of the The Roots, “Time to teach a new way / Maybe then they’ll listen / to what’cha have to say.”

David Scheinbaum (right) signed books with Public Enemy’s Brian Hardgrove (left) at Verve Gallery of Photography on Saturday, Sept. 28.
Photo by Chris Stahelin.