SNS: What initially drew you to photography?

JB: I went to a sort of artsy school in Hampstead. I was the smallest and youngest kid in my class. So, I wasn’t really being picked for the sports teams. I used to hide out in the art room. I was always really into art. My mom was very into art. We went to a lot of museums. Somehow, I always knew that I was going to be an artist of some sort. I eventually went to St Martins to do a foundation year. I wanted to be a portrait painter. I wanted to be like David Hockney, who was really the jam at the time. But I didn’t think I was good enough, so I started taking pictures. I thought, “Oh, I’ll just go to photo school instead.” And that was it. I fell in love with photography.

SNS: Describe your experience photographing that first London rap showcase in 1982 for Melody Maker.

JB: There was no art direction or anything. The editors just said, “They’re all staying at this hotel. Go down and take pictures, and then go to the gig at night.” So I go down to this pretty sleazy “hotel” at the back of Victoria station. These guys were all hanging out in the lobby. I was so amazed by the style and the energy. That afternoon I took pictures of so many people, but I didn’t know who they were. It turned out to be Dondi and Futura, Afrika Bambaataa, and Fab 5 Freddy and Rammellzee. Really the godfathers of the movement. I went to the show at night, which was in a theater called The Venue. I was so mind-blown by the whole thing. On stage, all at the same time, were breakdancers, people painting a backdrop, Bam was on the turntables, Freddy was rapping. The Rocksteady Crew were breaking, Double Dutch girls were there. We had never seen anything like it. The energy was incredible.

SNS: How did you decide to move to New York? By happenstance, I was going to visit a friend in New York for Christmas. I went there and never really came back. That was it! It was not my intention to move to New York, but I just went and everything started happening. I arrived, got off the plane, took the train to West 4th Street, and the train was all covered in graffiti. There were some kids with a boombox. I thought, “Wow, this is really different from England.”

SNS: New York was an exciting place in the early 1980s, but it was also rough. As an outsider, did you perhaps feel safer than a local might traveling all over the city to take photos? JB: Definitely. I’d been living in Streatham, which was like a working class neighborhood. There were certain places you didn’t want to walk because there were skinhead gangs around who would beat you up or rob you. It wasn’t exactly a glamorous place I was living in. I was living in this house that was sort of like a squat. My rent was 5 pounds a week. So when I moved to New York, I was used to walking on the street. You just had your street smarts a little bit. And I actually didn’t find it frightening at all. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be scared of, because I wasn’t from there. I just kind of went there with open eyes.

__SNS: It was probably rare for the up-and-coming musicians and rappers you were shooting to meet someone near their age who was from another country. __

JB: Very true! I was like an alien that had landed. They’d never met anybody from the UK. They were like, “Oh you’re from London, is that near France?” I’d be like, “Yeahhh.” Because back in the day, people didn’t have money to travel. It was before the internet. They were really curious about me and I was curious about them. I must say, being a woman, I was less threatening maybe. Not being from there was helpful. It started conversation. It was great for my photos. At the time I was living in what is now Tribeca, in a loft building with a bunch of artists. It was dangerous. There really were junkies in the alley with a baseball bat. It was dark; it was an old abandoned warehouse neighborhood. You just knew to be careful. Then I moved to the East Village and I lived by Tompkins Square Park, so I was there for the riots. Around the corner from where I was living was a crack house. That wasn’t a nice neighborhood either. Sometimes it was hard to get a taxi to take you over there after you’d been out because they didn’t want to go there. But it was my neighborhood.

SNS: Your RUN DMC photo that features in SNS’s new collection was taken in 1984 and was the first time you’d shot them, right?

JB: It was a commission from The Face magazine. It was pre-cell phones, so the number they gave me to call and arrange the shoot was a landline, which turned out to be Jam Master Jay’s mom’s house. I called up, and I was like, “Hi, I’m a British journalist,” and he’s just like, “Okay, come meet me at the Hollis train station.” I go down there with my Hasselblad. We didn’t have assistants or art directors or hair or makeup or any of that stuff. I just met him at the train station. I had all my camera backs loaded up with film. I did not know what type of neighborhood Hollis was. I was used to going to the Bronx to photograph Bambaataa or whatever. By that time, I was living in the East Village so I was used to a more destroyed neighborhood, shall we say. I go there and Jay meets me at the train station and walks me down the street. And it’s this really nice neighborhood! Leafy, beautiful trees, houses; it seemed very middle class. I walked down the street and there the guys are, just standing in the street with a couple of their friends. It was such a surprise to me. I started taking pictures.

SNS: What does looking at that photo now make you think about?

JB: It is one of my favorite shots I’ve ever taken. Because it’s such a moment in time. I didn’t know who RUN DMC were. But it was right before they started to get super famous. It was just a bunch of kids hanging out with their friends. They had a mixer or something. They’re standing by the car, they’re under the dappled sunlight, they’re on the street where they live. They’ve got a car, they’re listening to music blaring out of the car. I thought, “This is so great.” Sometimes when you take a picture like that, which turned out to be a so-called “iconic” picture…as I took it, you get an almost physical feeling like, “I know this is gonna be a good picture.” The hair is standing up on the back of your neck. You get a little chill. I took quite a few pictures that day, but not that many. Every roll of film cost money. It’s not like digital, where you can shoot hundreds of pictures for free. It was a special day.

SNS: Did the guys have a clear idea about how they wanted to be depicted? Were they actively trying to show off their adidas?

JB: Hip-hop is about style and attitude. And that’s what they were wearing the day I got there. I didn’t tell them to wear adidas. That’s exactly the way they were. You had to look good. So they knew they were coming on a photo session, but they probably looked like that every day. I don’t really pose people, which is why in that picture some people are looking in the camera, some people aren’t. All I’ll do is tell people to get a little closer together, make sure there’s a little bit of light on everybody’s faces; that was it. They posed like that. My thing is to try and capture the moment. And who they are at that moment. Style-wise, it’s pretty amazing. Cazal, Kangol, adidas, the whole thing. The whole 9 yards. They’re really hip-hop of that moment.

SNS: Other people are in the shot too. Do you know who they are?

JB: They’re friends. Or maybe roadies or something. Fludd, Butter Love, Cool Tee, and Runny Ray.

SNS: How had things changed by the next time you shot RUN DMC?

JB: A couple years later I did another photo shoot for RUN DMC, for that single “Mary Mary”. It was a studio shoot. By then, they had big gold chains. They had their look. They’re all wearing dark clothing. They’ve all got the hats on. They’re looking in the camera. It was a much more focused shoot. That’s what happened a lot in hip-hop. I photographed Salt-N-Pepa before they had even gotten signed to a record company. They were just these 2 girls who were hanging out on the Lower East Side. They were like, “We’ve got a record coming out, do you want to be our photographer?” And by the time I got to take that picture of them for the jacket, they were fully styled. They had gold chains, the earrings. People had got their look in place. And that is what had happened with RUN DMC by the time I photographed them later. They were coming with a press guy, somebody else from another record company, the manager, the bodyguard. In that shot in Hollis, there was none of that. It was just me and them on the street.

SNS: How does it feel to document musicians now versus when you first started? These days, they’re presented a lot differently.

JB: These days, shoots are so styled. That’s the difference. These days, some new young artist can’t move without having a stylist come and dress them head to toe. “Oh, put these Prada pants on.” You take some young rapper kid and he’s wearing Comme des Garçons—he can’t afford that! He’s a kid from Queens. That happens a lot. RUN DMC had their own style. They didn’t need the stylist. Style and attitude is so important. Every day when you get up in the morning, you have to figure out what you’re going to wear. What sneakers are you going to wear? What jeans? What t-shirt? And it’s a decision that everybody has to make. We all have to get dressed in the morning. These guys decided to look like that during our shoot in Hollis, and it turned out to be such a classic look. I’ve shown that photo a lot in galleries and museums. People stand in front of it and go, “Ohhh, the shells, I used to have those!” They’re looking at the laces, or the not the laces. They’re looking at every single thing they’re wearing. It brings back memories for people. It’s an added thing apart from the photograph itself. People are looking at the style.

SNS: How do you view the nostalgia that exists for the early days of hip-hop or punk?

JB: Both punk and hip-hop were movements that started before the internet, before Instagram, before social media. Before any of it. They were movements that grew out of pretty much poor communities. London was broke when I was doing the punk stuff. And then I moved to New York, and New York was broke. People didn’t have jobs. People were making songs about protest, about the way their lives were. Like The Clash, or Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” is an obvious one. People had to make stuff up as they went along. It wasn’t like they said, “Oh we’re doing a photo shoot, let’s get a stylist and designer clothes!” They had to do it on their own. You have to go out lookin’ fresh. There’s a nostalgia for that, because it’s authentic. If something goes up on social media—let’s say Cardi B is wearing something—the next minute, everybody could be buying that and wearing it. We didn’t have that back in the day. You didn’t know what people were doing in downtown Brooklyn. You had to be there and be part of it to know about it. I think there’s a nostalgia for that authenticity that we can’t ever have because things move so fast now. Also, you weren’t being told what to wear. Basically, these people were making style up. And people would look at it and go, “Oh yeah, I want to be part of RUN DMC. Okay, I’m going to buy those shell toes.” Whereas now, something’s on Instagram and it’s a whole look put together for you. Kids are nagging their parents to buy $150 sneakers. I think that authenticity has been lost, and that people miss it. Unless you’re kind of off social media, it’s hard to maintain.

SNS: Speaking of social media, what has it been like documenting this year’s Black Lives Matter protests in New York and posting the photos on Instagram?

JB: I’m a photographer; that’s what I do. I’m probably addicted to taking pictures. After being on lockdown here, I heard about the Black Lives Matter protests. We were really in shock. It’s not that we didn’t know this has been happening for hundreds of years. Racial discrimination is not a new thing. But the fact that kids were actually out on the street protesting—all sorts of kids—I felt the urgency of it. I was obsessed with going out. I would go out with my mask and join the marches and take pictures. I really felt like I was in the presence of history. I wanted to be a part of it; I wanted to be another voice. But I also wanted to document it. It had a lot of the passion, when I think about it, of Rock Against Racism back in England in the early ’80s. I’ve been on a lot of demonstrations in my life: anti-Trump demonstrations, ACT UP, all that stuff. But this is something different. It’s young people who are actually now super politically aware. And hopefully, everybody is going to go out and vote!

SNS: Are you still a big hip-hop fan?

JB: I love listening to music. I’m open to listening to any kind of music. I still listen to a lot of house music, a lot of dance music, and a lot of old-school rap. Whoever is putting stuff out, I’ll give it a listen.

See more of Janette Beckman’s work at janettebeckman.com, and @janettephoto on Instagram.

Ali Gitlow is a London-based art book editor and writer. She has contributed to The Red Bull Music Academy Daily, Resident Advisor, Crack Magazine, VICE, and more. Check out her work at aligitlow.com.

Proceeds from the sales of the collection will be donated to the Jam Master Jay Foundation.