![]() The right photographer can reveal the presence of an artist and weave a narrative that is built picture by breathtaking picture. Finding the right photographer for any given subject is a dare that we accept with love, acute attention to detail, and a competitive zeal to exceed all previous depictions. It’s a rare photographer who is truly suited for every story. “Our photography runs the gamut of style and taste from glamorous fashion shoots to harshly realistic portraiture and documentary work. “With the catalyst of a great subject - that being the hip-hop explosion- VIBE’s photographers have explored a generous vocabulary of visual possibilities that jumpstart the intensity of picture making,” George wrote in the introduction to VX: 10 Years of VIBE Photography, a coffee table book that I edited with him. ![]() George took his work seriously, ever conscious of his responsibility to create images that would come to define hip hop in the 1990s, long before most people foresaw that it would become the world’s dominant cultural force. The chosen few who were blessed with the opportunity to work with him had earned their shot. A tireless advocate for new talent, George would spend long hours in his cluttered office late at night, reviewing the portfolios of aspiring and established photographers and returning them with thoughtful written critiques to help them develop their craft. In addition to his work at VIBE, George served as director of photographic practices at Parsons School for Design. Deeply committed to artistic integrity, George was a remarkable creative force in his own right: he was a photographer, painter, educator, and writer whose work has been exhibited around the world. Of all the talented creative spirits who collaborated to make VIBE, none was more indispensable than the late great George Pitts, VIBE’s founding director of photography. CNN, all those guys-when shit got real they were coming to VIBE. As the president of VIBE, I was the commissioner of the culture. “At the time there was no Internet,” says Keith Clinkscales, the magazine’s first president and CEO. VIBE was the first periodical to cover rap, R&B, rock, reggae, dance music, fashion, sports, and politics-all through the prism of what people were just beginning to call “urban culture,” another way of describing what Steve Stoute would later dub The Tanning of America. We had to earn respect by doing great work-and we did a lot of it, printed on large format heavy stock paper, left over in a warehouse after Life magazine folded. ![]() Yet our multiracial staff and corporate connects were always viewed with some suspicion. With backing from Time Inc., we had deeper pockets than most, and we served up some of the best writing, photography, and design hip-hop has ever seen. With all due respect to The Source, Rap Pages, and Murder Dog, VIBE changed the game in hip-hop journalism. Twenty five years ago it’s become clear that we created something much more important. When the legendary Quincy Jones established VIBE magazine, his stated goal was to found “a Rolling Stone for the hip-hop generation,” but the staff-which I joined at the magazine’s launch, in 1993-aspired to create something closer to Vanity Fair. IT WAS WRITTEN: VIBE MAGAZINE, 2PAC & BIGGIE 2Pac's Siblings Distrust Cop's Motives For Investigating Keefe D ![]()
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