Eddie Otchere - The Spirit Behind The Lens

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This week I'm joined by Eddie Otchere — a name that might be new to some, but his work absolutely won't be. Eddie is the photographer behind some of the most iconic images of 90s hip hop, jungle and drum & bass, garage and grime. He was Metalheadz's official photographer, shot Wu-Tang Clan, Aaliyah, Biggie, Jay-Z, So Solid Crew, Estelle, Chronixx, and pretty much every rapper you cared about coming up. His work is currently exhibited at the V&A East, and he's spent the last 30 years documenting London's black music and dance culture.

Eddie grew up in Brixton, Stockwell and Vauxhall, falling into record collecting at Groove Records in Soho when he was so small he couldn't see over the counter. He picked up his first camera in the late 80s — a Praktika left behind by a friend's granddad — and went on to build one of the most important visual archives of UK club culture. This is a long, deep, wide-ranging conversation, and one I came away from genuinely feeling like I'd learned something. I hope you do too.

Topics covered:

• Growing up in South London and the village mentality of the area
• Early days at Groove Records, Red Records, Dub Vendor and the record shops of Soho
• Getting online in the mid-90s via Direct Connection in Stockwell — and how hip hop became the global language
• Picking up a Praktika camera and falling into photography alongside record collecting
• Why being analog matters in a "post-fact" world of remastered records and retconned history
• The Canon EOS 10 and learning to shoot in pitch-black clubs
• Shooting jungle raves, Metalheadz, and protecting young people from tabloid demonisation
• How Red Bull, smoking bans and changing crowd behaviour shifted the look and feel of clubs
• The art of the loop — Alchemist, Dilla, No I.D. and chasing perfect samples
• Working with Wu-Tang as teenagers and learning to build a body of work
• Photographing Aaliyah, Biggie, Jay-Z, Estelle and Chronixx
• Around the early days of grime and why he gravitated toward So Solid in South London
• Drum & bass being run by women, and the importance of Chemistry and Storm
• The General Levy "cancellation", gatekeeping, and protecting a culture
• The V&A East exhibition and the tension between DIY scenes and academic curation
• Lee Scratch Perry, dub museums, and what music history should look like
• Meta glasses, AI as a personal agent, and digital asset management for photographers
• His advice for new photographers: intention is everything