VIBE- October 1994

WORD: HARDCORE HEROES

Stay hardcore. That ideal has strung together Glen E. Friedman's photography and life for 18 years as a photographer for Skateboarder, as a producer of punk rockers Suicidal Tendencies, and as the album-cover photographer for Run-D.M.C, Ice-T, and Public Enemy. Now Friedman, 29, has collected 15 years of those images in a new book called Fuck You Heroes: Photographs 1976-1991.

"I became a photographer because I hated photography," he says. "I saw all this "photography" in magazines that was bullshit. I felt like, I know what's really going on, and I don't see it in this so-called mainstream media."

Friedman's first snaps were of the radical Southern California skate stars he grew up with, like Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, and Mark 'Gator' Rogowski. "Skating is an individualistic art form, a way to express yourself, release energy, get rid of angst," he says. "I found the same thing in punk and rap."

In 1985 the Beastie Boys introduced him to Def Jam moguls-in-the-making Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, and Friedman found an instant bond. He was soon dispatched to shoot seminal album covers for a variety of Def Jam artists. "This book is an important social document," he says. "People need to see these pictures; they need to be reminded of what they were like when they were young." And that, according to Friedman, is the point: "Who has to grow up? All you do is lose your integrity, lose your ideals, lose your drive."

Cory Johnson
VIBE October 1994

BACK to OLD PRESS ARCHIVE index