Early Hip Hop culture photographed: Beat Positive at the Getty Gallery, London -

It’s quite a small exhibition, but there’s some cracking images to be seen at ‘Beat Positive,’ a photographic celebration of early hip hop culture at the Getty Gallery in central London.

On view from 31 May to 4 August 2018, the exhibition showcases iconic images from British photographers Janette Beckman and David Corio alongside never before seen material from the Michael Ochs, Right On! and Redferns archives.

Here’s the blurb from the website:

Now one of the biggest selling musical genres globally, hip hop began with a much simpler goal: to get people moving. On the evening of August 11, 1973, Clive Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc, set up two turntables in the recreation room at 1520 Sedgewick Ave in the Bronx in order to entertain the crowd gathered for his sister Cindy’s birthday party. In a completely new technique he called the Merry Go-Round, Herc extended short drum breaks, now known as break beats, using two copies of the same records. The crowd went wild, the party went late, and though no one at the time was aware, a new genre was born.

Londoners Janette Beckman and David Corio first discovered hip hop in 1982 while on assignment for music magazines such as NME, Melody Maker and The Face. Their portraits of Run DMC, Slick Rick, Salt ‘n’ Pepa, Whodini, Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah and the Beastie Boys, along with many others, are considered classics of the genre. Their work has been shown internationally at museums and galleries such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Museum of the City of New York and Powerhouse Gallery.

The show also features never-before-seen historic photographs sourced from Getty Images’ extensive archive, including images of a young LL Cool J, a triptych of The Fat Boys filming their ‘Jail House Rap’ video and the 1984 Hip Hop Jam at London’s Southbank, taken from the Michael Ochs, Right On! and Redferns archives respectively.