Music

Fahey/Klein - REBELS by Janette Beckman Recap

Julian Lucas
Published 5/9/2022 8:00Am PST

On Thursday night on May 5th, 2022, the 70s, 80s, and 90s Hip Hop, Punk, and fashion enthusiasts alike went down memory lane to celebrate and enjoy the photographic works of British photographer Janette Beckman. Her Exhibition, Rebels, featured at Fahey/Klein Gallery (Los Angeles), took many of us back in time, to the beginning of history in the making. 

Rebels, which encompasses 40 years of photography, provides a magnificent glimpse of Janette's importance in the worlds of art, photojournalism, music, fashion, and popular culture. Janette Beckman has spent decades photographing larger-than-life rebels in music, fashion, and other fields. The impromptu and raw quality of each image is what gives her images their engaging appeal — similar to the spontaneous wildness of 1970s and 1980s subcultures themselves.

Janette Beckman’s work is in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe.  Beckman’s commercial work includes assignments for clients such as Dior, Kangol, Levi’s, Schott, and Shinola.

Fahey/Klein Gallery
Janette Beckman
Rebels May 5 – June 18, 2022

Hours: 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Tuesday through Saturday

Phone: (323) 934-2250
Fax: (323) 934-4243
Email: contact@faheykleingallery.com

2 Live and Die in L.A. Review & Photo Essay

Reviewed by Julian Lucas

There were so many gallery openings this past weekend throughout the city of Los Angeles and even in the burbs. Usually when we think of exhibitions, we think of the westside or the center of L.A., but curator Frankie Orozco changed that way of thinking this past weekend with 2 Live and Die in L.A. The event was held at the now closed Juvenile Justice Center Court in South Central Los Angeles better known today as Chuco’s Justice Center where the organization Youth Justice Coalition offers a wide range of programs to assist individuals who were once incarcerated, reintegrate back into society. The JJC closed its doors about 8 years ago.

The event was a success 2 Live and Die in L.A. brought out over 2500 people and featured live performances from bands throughout Los Angeles -  Sin the Artists, Tunez 187, Migs Whiskey, Luicidal, Lil sodi, and Bella The Rapper. They played their sets perfectly against a colorful written wall, a perfect backdrop against the silhouette of tall skinny palm trees in the foreground and background. You definitely knew you were in L.A. 

Vendors from all over lined the parking lot including L.A. Originals Taco Truck. if you got hungry, you didn’t have to leave. You could continue to kick back, enjoy the surroundings, eat tacos and get punch-drunk from drinking bottles of Jarritos all day and night.

Successfully strategic - the location fit Orozco’s vision. The works of over 40 Los Angeles photographers were intelligently and uniquely displayed, covering the hallways, rooms, along with the cinder-block walls of small rooms with large windows including a stall-less toilet revealing characteristics of a holding tank. To many of us remembered what it was like to be within the confines of those thick brick walls waiting for punishment.

The photographic imagery that covered the walls were nostalgic for most of us who grew up in Southern California. The work included individuals who struggled with homelessness and addiction, humanizing portraits of those whose reality was survival, just doing what they knew best to do so. Other works were drenched with bright, candy-colored lowriders, a trademark of Los Angeles, the city where lowriding was born.

What is most powerful and important about the 2 Live and Die in L.A. opening is that artists, who may have been caught up in the system at some point, changed the narrative by recharging a facility that was once used to penalize people.