Hip-hop began not just as a music genre but as a cultural movement. From soundsystems to DJs and repurposed vinyl to graffiti, insurrection and break dance, it attacked the mainstream using a variety of invigorating elements.
But some elements have survived time's arrow better than others. Changes in hip-hop's tastes dealt break dance, better known as breaking, a pretty rough body blow. Especially since the arrival of gangsta rap, which looked upon dancing as something that got in the way of drinking, jacking and mostly wasting everyone's time. Yet breaking survives and, with the thankful resurgence of conscientious hip-hop, is increasing in momentum.
And that velocity makes for some pretty pictures.
Good thing Touch Me I'm Sick shutterbug Charles Peterson was around to take them. The man whose photos helped document the grunge phenomenon is adding hip-hop to his portfolio with Cypher, out now from New York's powerHouse Books. It shows off what happens when a ring of revisionist breakers forms and sets about defying gravity and the human body's structural integrity.
Peterson used medium format cameras for a larger-than-life feel, and it works. Meanwhile, Jeff Chang's deep introduction, like his other valuable writing, adds the kind of cultural context needed to remind the world that hip-hop is much more than Flava Flav and 50 Cent. Much more, indeed.
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