Artist Interview: David Scheinbaum

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I kinda came into hip hop, not really as a photographer but more as a parent, um, my son and a number of his friends

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when they were kind of between the ages of twelve and thirteen, um, got very interested in breakdancing and hip hop and music, and there was, um, in Santa Fe

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There is not many opportunities to be exposed to hip hop culture and-and you know, other than the radio and the media, um

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They-these, my son and his friends asked me to take them to a concert um, and I wasn't sure at first but then I actually I realized that I was the only parent

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that was kind of willing to do it and they kept coming back to me to ask me to do it and I then I finally agreed.

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Of course, you know, here they are, twelve and thirteen years old, its a school night, and they want me to drive them to Albuquerque, which is, you know, seventy miles away

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And, to top it off, when I got to the theater, um, you know, about eight, nine o' clock at night, the kids said "Ok Dad," you know, "pick us up at two," and I said, and-and, you know, theres-theres just no way I was gonna leave, drop these kids off, and and pick them up

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you know, an-and later um, I didn't know much about hip hop, in fact I didn't know anything about hip hop, um, I was kind of a victim of um, media, I think, um, in terms of my misconceptions about the genre.

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Um, I had no understanding about the diffierientations between gangster rap and hip hop, um, what goes on at these things, you know, is it violent? is it scary? are they gonna, something gonna happen?

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You know, what is the extent of drug use and you know, just all the things I-I read about in the paper, so I, I went, and in a way that night kinda changed everything for me, um, I sat there, I, I watched this group of, of

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young people, of, of all ages, various races, various economic groups, various, you know, class. There was this incredible transcendence of, of, everything and, here, everyone was together, kind of rallying around the music, it was incredible, good energy, and I was, just kind of amazed, you know, watching this thing. And I was also amazed about how many of the kids came over to me, it seemed almost that everyone was equally concerned that I was comfortable

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They were not only concerned about these kids, but they were concerned about me as well. And, I was just blown away and I was impressed, and, and I didn't reflect much on it at the time, other than, it was incredibly positive experience for me and I know it was a very positive experience for these kids.

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Benjamin Bloom: What was your opinion of the music, how did you find the music?
David Scheinbaum: When I talk about this to other people, I say, you know it might sound ironic but I didn't hear anything I just felt it. Its as if somebody is actually literally taking their fists and pounding it on my chest

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I mean the-the bass, and-and I think many of us, you know I think anyone who drives, has experienced, you know, sitting at a red light and having a car come up somewhere either next to them or behind them or three cars back and your car starts vibrating with-with the bass of-of their music, um, it was kind of shocking, being at my first concert and, and experiencing the-the bass and rattling my brain and my body and, and I really recall really trying to hear words

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but I couldn't make any words out, I just like, it was like boom boom boom, it was just like pounding on me, um, but I loved the rhythm I loved the beat and I-and I and, you know, you know, your head-your head starts nodding right away you know whether you can hear the lyrics or not

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but not, of course, the lyrics have, have grown very important to me and, and in fact, the lyrics have a lot to do with, with why I, I pursued the, the photographs. There's a lot of, there was a lot of difficulty with getting permission and, and, you know, where I could really work freely, and those first few concerts I was, I was maybe working a little more surreptitiously. Um, I was grabbing pictures, so to speak. You know, shooting quickly, feeling I didn't have like all the time in the world and I better shoot now 'cause I'm gonna get, you know, thrown out of here or something like that. But it wasn't until actually that there was open communication between myself and the theater and the artist, and I was kind of given this, um, this really kind of amazing, this, you know, total access, um, especially given the fact, um, that I, I don't know if you realize it but I, I only work from the stage and, and when I actually decided early on that I was going to do this work, part of that decision was that I wanted to try to photograph from the point of view of the artist, um, and most other images I've seen, um, which is mostly in magazines and things, you know, they're mostly taken from below the stage and, you know, they're basically pictures of them, and I really wasn't interested in taking pictures of them as much as I was taking, interested in taking pictures about them and about the music. And the crowds are so fantastic, I also wanted the crowd as my background rather than the stage as my background. When I'm in the darkroom making these prints, I am absolutely blasting the music of the performers that I'm printing. And I guess, in a way, that helps psych, psych myself up to try and make the prints right. And you'll see that some of the prints are darker than others, some of the prints are, have more contrast, some of them are, you know, they're imprinted with

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David Scheinbaum: different palettes actually. In the dark room I'm using my hands, I'm using my eyes, I'm using my, you know, my sense of touch. My hands are in the chemicals, and you know you have a lot of senses going, but you know I think what's coming into my ears has a whole lot to do with what's coming out of my hands.

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Benjamin Bloom: In your statement you referenced, um, some of your inspiration for the hip-hop photos. Can you talk more about that?

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David Scheinbaum: When I, you know, going back to the beginning of thinking about doing, you know, this work, music photography to make a generalization, again, my training really was, and I don't use this word to be um, a snob, you know, but my training was kind of more into the fine art aspect of photography, and I was trained very traditionally, you know, more within kind of the Ansel Adams approach,

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to not only, you know, control over exposure and development, but also making prints that had a certain look and a certain feel, and that usually translated into, you know, images having to have 154 shades of grey, and detail in the whites, and detail in the blacks, and you know, there's this prescribed formula on how things needed to be, and in a way that was my training.

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And it took me a long time to kind of reject that, not that I don't respect that, but in a way, in my own work to start making images that looked and felt differently. And, and the work that I turned to was the work of the photographer named Roy DeCarava. The book that he did in the 50's is a book called "The Sound I Saw".

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It's a book of jazz musicians and jazz photographs and that was the book that I not only turned to then, that I continue to turn to and in making the prints for this exhibition I turned to it again, and I sat with it long and hard before I went to the darkroom and crafted

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Um and crafted the prints for this show. In a way, that body of work gave me the- the artistic strength to make some of the prints quite dark. Some of them, you know, too contrasty, less contrasty, to work with the palette in the way that I did um, you know it was comforting to me to be able to turn to that book. It did give me artistic strength to pull this off in a way. And to not only say I think this is something I can do and I think I can try, but it also gave me guidance in the actual individual prints. They're very much from his inspiration.