The photographer Michel Haddi has had quite an eventful life. He spent much of his childhood in orphanages and discovered the world of fashion there thanks to old magazines that his mother brought him when she visited him. He never knew his father and from a young age he had luck on his side: be it when the police in Saudi Arabia stopped him with a suitcase full of whiskey, when he was shot in Berlin on the day the Berlin Wall fell or when he Bin Laden himself ran into him in Yemen. He survived all of these situations unscathed. “When I was young, I moved to live with my mother in a banlieue in Paris. The neighborhood was terrible. I looked around and thought, “If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to end up being a real criminal.” [risas]. There was no Plan B. They offered me $7,000 to bring a car full of gold from Romania to Paris, but I knew it was a dead end,” says Haddi.
Haddi released her latest book, The Legend, this fall. Tupac (MHS Publishing), about another, no less legendary man: Tupac Shakur. On September 13, 1996, Tupac Amaru Shakur, better known to his followers as 2Pac and one of the most famous rappers in the United States, was murdered in Las Vegas. For many, his death was another step in the verbal escalation between the artist and Notorious BIG, another hip-hop icon. The two had sent threatening messages to each other and this moment would go down in history as the clearest in the confrontation between musicians from both coasts. Tupac was Western; Biggie, this. Shakur immediately became a global icon and his image became the hallmark of gangsta rap, a style most popular on American streets in those years and centered on guns, drugs and street corners, prisons and revenge.
—-PIEFOTO—- Tupac, portrayed in 1993. Michel Haddi
—-PIEFOTO—- Tupac, portrayed in 1993. Michel Haddi
Haddi was one of the last photographers who had the opportunity to immortalize the rapper. “Tupac reminded me of Malcolm X and I told him that. Then we joked about it and I asked him to make the X with his arms [sonríe]. You know what? I looked straight at him and saw a dead man. I have a lot of intuition and I think that intuition has saved my life five or six times. The same thing happened to me with Brandon Lee when I worked with him. [el actor murió en 1993, en un accidente durante un rodaje]“I saw a dead man,” he says. “I was living in Venice Beach when The Source magazine called me to do a photo shoot with Tupac. He had just finished filming John Singleton's film Poetic Justice, and when he arrived at the studio I was struck by his elegance and erudition. The guy had a fabulous soul.”
There aren't many popular faces who haven't sat in front of his camera: from Cameron Diaz to Kate Moss, from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to David Bowie – everyone has posed for this Franco-Algerian's lens.
—-PIEFOTO—- Tupac, portrayed in 1993. Michel Haddi
Part of Haddi's work is currently on display in the exhibition “Beyond Fashion” at the 29 Arts in Progress gallery in Milan. The project is designed in rotations. The first can be enjoyed until December 22nd, while the second begins on January 16th next year and lasts until March 16th. Different images are displayed with each spin.
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