Janette Beckman has shot Sting. Several times. And Boy George. Blondie. The Sex Pistols.The photographer has captured some of the most famous images of the stars and has a stream of anecdotes. The New York-based lens woman, back in her native London to launch an exhibition of her work, recalls that after art college, she was first commissioned by Sounds to shoot Siouxsie and the Banshees and went on to work for the Face and many more publications.She has photographed punks such as the Clash and the Ramones; plus hip-hop artists such as Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash, and Slick Rick. All brought attitude to their music, and Beckman once did a show titled “Archive of Attitude.” But this often didn’t show when meeting them in the flesh, she says.“Many were just starting out when I met them,” she said in an interview before the opening of the exhibition, well timed for the 40th anniversary of the London punk revolution. While members of the Clash were known for being abrasive offstage (think of the “Rude Boy” movie) and being aggressive onstage, Beckman remembers going to photograph the band for Melody Maker before a concert in a bicycle stadium in Milan. “Everyone was smoking pot and stoned, drinking beers, very mellow,” she recalls. “I think they were just glad to see a British face.” The shots, in a tunnel which served as a makeshift dressing room, are beautifully relaxed, with the highly-strung Joe Strummer reclining in a chair, stretching and completely betraying his bad-boy reputation.“I was asked, ‘do you want to shoot three punks?’ That was the Police. Sting wasn’t the big star he is now. I did three of their album covers,” she says. Pictures for “Zenyatta Mondatta” were taken in the middle of a forest in the Netherlands.Still, many of her photos are informally shot on the streets or in natural situations rather than posed in a studio. Beckman quotes with pride the remark that she is “the anti Annie Leibovitz”: “I want to see how people are and express that in my photos, I don’t go into a shoot with a conceived idea, I just want to document what is there.” In one Melody Maker portrait Boy George is just lolling on a sidewalk in Notting Hill Gate, London. He is wearing full makeup and distressed jeans: “He looks brilliant in Vivian Westwood. The paper I was working for was reluctant to put a gay guy on the cover, but they did and he was at number one that week.”From British punk she moved to New York hip-hop stars in 1982. “When I got to America, I got away with a lot as a Brit. I was out shooting Africa Bambaataa and people were saying ‘what are you doing? You’re not from around here.’”In 2014, Beckman’s friend, the artist and designer Cey Adams, suggested letting some of New York’s best-known graffiti artists loose on her rap pictures, and hence the “Mash-Up” collage series was born, developing a new form of collaborative art and building on her originals. Now she has added a UK and punk theme, with artists, designers and musicians taking part including Pam Hogg, Dan Holliday, Christos Tolera, Hattie Stewart and Ian “Swifty” Swift.One of the best is based on a shot of ska revival band the Specials on a rainy Southend morning on their 1980 “Seaside Tour.” The Melody Maker photo was manipulated by Horace Panter, who now is known for his art as well his membership of the band. Beckman loves the rips Panter put in the photo and caption “Hungover and feuding.” It is all the more poignant with the December 2015 death of drummer John Bradbury, who seems separated from the others.On the way into the London show there is a slogan stuck up in punk style lettering: “There are two phrases that sum up the legacy of punk: one is ‘no’ and the other is ‘f--- off.’ – Marco Pirroni.” In true punk style, this was quickly defaced by a man who added “to fascism” to the word “no.”Beckmann is still a very active photographer but admits: “It’s great when I meet people who say ‘I had that picture on my bedroom wall – wow, you did that!’”“Punk Rock Hip Hop Mash-Up,” curated by Karen Mitchell, Stephen Colegrave and Ed Eustace, is the debut event at the Punctum Gallery, Chelsea College of Arts, part of the University of the Arts in London (UAL) at 16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU, next to Tate Britain, from January 19 through 31, 2016. Signed limited edition prints are on sale at the gallery from £150.
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