George DuBose will never forget the day in 1991 he went to Bed-Stuy to snap the Notorious B.I.G.[1] and looked down the barrel of an Uzi.

The photographer insisted on an escort, “as I wasn’t about to go to that neighborhood with my cameras alone.”

DuBose took 34 shots of Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace, and DJ 50 Grand. “I had decided to ‘get out of Dodge’ when Biggie asked me if I would shoot his posse. What posse?” DuBose wondered.

“Next thing I knew there were 20 cats coming out of the woodwork. I saw a empty wall that was being hit by the sunlight and told the guys to line up in front of the wall.”

There was one more surprise.

“When I looked into the viewfinder to frame the shot, I saw that Biggie had an Uzi. Where it came from, I have no idea. I asked him politely to point the gun away from the camera. Took two more shots and that was that.”

The group shot and the entire contact sheet are part of a show celebrating the “Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-hop”[2] book at Hasselblad’s pop-up studio in Noho.

The exhibit[3] opens to the public Friday, with a launch party Thursday evening.

References

  1. ^ Notorious B.I.G. (pagesix.com)
  2. ^ “Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-hop” (www.amazon.com)
  3. ^ The exhibit (www.eventbrite.com)

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