Brian “B+” Cross, the Man Behind the Camera(s)
Updated: Sep 11, 2021
Born in Ireland, Brian Cross is a man of many talents. His passion for photography has led him to settle in San Francisco in the early 90s where he attended CalArts. There, he immediately started working on his first book It’s Not About a Salary: Rap, Race + Resistance in Los Angeles (Verso Books, 1993). In 1993, he shot the cover for Freestyle Fellowship's Innercity Griots LP (4th & Broadway), having created countless records sleeves ever since for acts such as Jurassic 5, The Pharcyde, Cut Chemist, Flying Lotus or the late David Axelrod. As they were filming DJ Shadow's High Noon music video in Mexico in 1996 and unhappy with the way they were usually made by the industry, Brian and Eric Coleman teamed up to form Mochilla which have seen the release of many DJ mixes and several full-length music films. The pair were instrumental in Banksy's Oscar nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (dir: Banksy, 2010). In 2017, B+ published a photo essay called Ghostnotes: Music of the Unplayed (University of Texas Press), serving as an extensive mid-career retrospective on his work. B+ is currently finishing a film for Irish rapper/singer Denise Chaila and shooting a film about The Supremes.
From Ireland to California, a One Way Ticket
Jon
You were born in 1966, and you grew up in Limerick, Ireland. What was it like?
Brian
I guess in retrospect it looked pretty bleak. There were huge social issues in Ireland at that time, 30% unemployment and obviously a sort of low level Civil War happening in the northern part of the country. There were hundreds of thousands of people leaving. But then there were moments where things kind of made sense in the world. Obviously punk rock was a big part of that when I was a kid. I would have turned 11 at the end of 1976, and really that’s when I started to become aware of punk rock, and I started having more than a passing interest in popular culture. But then also, you know, playing sports and being a fucking regular cat or whatever, being interested in art and music, and it was okay.
I mean, the education system was pretty good. Although, Ireland was very inward looking in those days, and it was difficult to imagine what it was like in the rest of the world besides what we had access to from TV. There was much less back and forth, you know, when people would leave generally they wouldn't come back, or they wouldn't come back for a very long time. And places like the US seemed incredibly far away. I mean, I was properly culture shook when I came to the US for the first time in 1988. It was so overwhelming that we were kind of almost scared to leave the house. It was like too much stimulation. Everything seemed so new, whereas some of the streets in Limerick looked like they probably would have looked at the end of the 19th century.
Jon
You went to the West Coast in ‘88 and that’s why you went back there after your studies in Dublin.
Brian
Yeah, San Francisco first. I came here for a summer from the end of April until the end of September, and then I went home, I finished my undergrad and I was thinking about options. But I went back to Limerick for a year and worked in the local video shop, and then during that year, I applied to some grad schools basically. So I applied to CalArts and I applied to Columbia.
I don't remember how CalArts came to my attention, but I wrote to them and they sent me a catalogue and then eventually I applied, and then I got a letter from the embassy offering me a visa to go to live in America. Because there were so many Irish folks living in this country illegally at that point that they made a deal to give out visas. It was by lottery and my mom had applied when I was 16, and I was like 20-21. And then suddenly I got the visa and I was accepted into CalArts, but I actually came to America before I was accepted into CalArts.
Jon
Did you have other options in case you were not accepted at CalArts?
Brian
Oh yeah, at that time I was working moving furniture so I would have been doing that.
Jon
I read in your Ghostnotes book [University of Texas Press, 2017] that you started to listen to hip hop music and you were interested in photography, but that you were painting first. How did you become a photographer?
Brian
That's like maybe five or six years there. When I was in Ireland I studied painting, but I was really only interested in photography... In fact I wasn't really interested that much in photography, I was more interested in ideas. So I always had this sort of practice where you don't know whether it's going to be a painting or whether it's going to be a photograph, you don't know whether it’s going to be a short film, you don't know whether it's going to be a piece of audio, you don't know what it is! So that's the kind of work I was interested in making but I was young. So at CalArts there were some photographers there that I was interested in, particularly this one guy called Allan Sekula, so I thought it was worth applying to that school.
The music was something that I was absolutely fanatical about, but it was separate. Y'know, there's a big wall between the two things, and I don't think the two can exist at the same time. I mean, there was Basquiat and people like Fab Five Freddy, but that was a whole other dimension. I mean, I was just a kid making art.
And so then when I came to CalArts, a professor of mine asked me if I would make a photo essay, which was something that was kind of challenging, because I didn't really work in that way. I said I would, and then he gave me a choice. It was this other idea he had or to make a photo essay about hip hop in Los Angeles, "You've been arguing for the inclusion of hip hop in any discussion of the city, so make that argument using photos." Okay, so then within a month I had some photos, and they were like, "We should make a book,” and I was like, "A book? What the fuck?!" It seemed like "Whoa!!" so I started.
I love music but I had a practice that was very different, I was really more of a landscape photographer actually, so that was the start. And it's only in the last sort of five years really that I've come to appreciate the learning that I did in those years, let's say between 1991 and 199. It was really a period of learning. I was trying all kinds of fucking shit, I was somehow batting my head against the wall of "What's the right way to make photos of this culture?" And I still don't have an answer… But that was that period, that was after grad school, and really trying to figure it out with a book. The book [It's Not About a Salary: Rap, Race + Resistance in Los Angeles, Verso Books] came out in 93 and is odd in many ways, and is how I met Josh. Through the book!
Working for Magazines, the Importance of the “Co-Sign” and Meeting Shadow
Jon
How did you convince the artists to let you take photos of them? And by someone who is not even American, almost like an outsider.
Brian
I didn't start off the first day photographing NWA obviously, I had to photograph lots of other guys that were lesser guys. But after a while you start to understand that within the culture, a co-sign from somebody was taken seriously, especially in those day. Now it's become more professionalized in the way that people network.
So, that’s how I met Josh. Mike Nardone, who used to do this radio show [We Came From Beyond, KXLU] told me “There's this guy in the Bay Area who's making these mixes to tape that are insane!” He played me one of the mixes and I was like, "Whoa!!!", and he said, "Dude, if you ever want to know anything about sampling this guy's encyclopedic, he's a maniac!" And all I had to say was "Hey man, Mike Nardone gave me your number", and Josh said "What do you need to know? What can I help you with?" and that's how it was, really!
So yeah, I just started going to the clubs and I'd bring my camera and then I would talk to people, and then people would say, "Oh, you should talk to this guy, you should talk to that guy" and I would just follow the thread. And it was that simple because it wasn’t an industry yet, there was no money. Now it's a different system, everybody has a manager and an agent, and it's just annoying!
Jon
You worked for URB, Rappages, but also for Dave Paul’s Bomb Hip Hop Magazine. Were you there from issue #1?
Brian
No, it already existed before. The first magazine I worked for was URB, I started at issue #2 or #3 [February/March 1991]. At first, The Bomb [Issue #1 is from October 1991] was more like an insider newsletter really, rather than a magazine per se. You know, at that time, it was something that you would get in the mail, and it was more of an industry magazine than it was a kind of general public thing. It was very useful for people that worked in radio. There'd be reviews of things that you wouldn't read anywhere else, or you'd know about records that you wouldn’t know anywhere else, especially more underground stuff. Billy Jam was there, Dave Paul was there…
But again, I was at URB first. I met Raymond [Roker, URB's co-founder] very early in that first kind of month. I'm like "Damn, he was on issue #1!" This young fella was making a magazine out of his house I mean, and his house was literally the size of… this big [he describes it as very small with his hands]! I was like "Wow, that's really far out!" And then he asked me if I would shoot, and I remember I'd never even seen my photographs reproduced. So, to see the photos, you've seen the magazines… The early ones are like, really badly printed newsprints where it would just knock all the contrast out of your photos, everything would be totally flat and uninteresting, not like it should be.
Jon
Different shades of grey.
Brian
Basically different shades of grey, exactly. But at the same time, that in and of itself was kind of a portal, to where Jeff [Chang] ends up writing a column for the magazine for a while. You know, Solesides started as a column in URB!
Jon
I think he went by DJ Zen back then?
Brian
He did, yeah. He would tell you what was going on in the Bay. Jeff was studying for his Master at UCLA at that time, and that's how we became friends. Jeff helped me re-edit my book - which was fucking insane - and we became friends, but I knew Josh previously.
On Meeting the Solesides Crew
Jon
So, you actually came to know about Josh through Mike Nardone as he told you about his mixes?
Brian
Yes, but when I actually met him in person it was Jeff who had set up a photo shoot. They were going to be in LA for the weekend and on a Sunday afternoon they came by and we took some photos. That's when I met them all for the first time.
Jon
Jerry Hawthorne who was working at KDVS in the early 90s sent us some staff lists from back then. Jeff, Xavier, Joseph and Tom are on there but not Josh, because I don’t think that he was a part of it, really.
Brian
He mightn't have been on staff, but he would have played mixes and he would have had a show. He was part of his Crew, but he might not have had an official role at the radio station. That sounds very much like Josh.
Jon
What you mean is that through Jeff's show they were able to have their music On Air?
Brian
Yeah, that's exactly it. So now they're a crew and Jeff is beginning to take a kind of organizational role. Then they came down to do Mike Nardone’s radio show, I think maybe they had their first independent release at that moment, which might have been like that one, that EP [Entropy b/w Send Them by DJ Shadow and the Groove Robbers b/w Asia Born / Solesides, 1993] with one side is Josh and the other side is Blackalicious or something.
Jon
That was Asia born.
Brian
That's right, so it’s 93, they would have had the test pressings. I remember that they were picking up the test pressings, and then Jeff asked me if I could take photos of them. And I remember it was a Sunday afternoon, it's pretty funny what those dudes looked like. I mean, just to see them at that age, that young.
Jon
You have published a photo of Josh behind a Cadillac on your Instagram, and there’s this one where the crew is sitting in the street stamping labels onto records.
Brian
Yeah, it was that period. There's a photo where they're all sitting on a bunch of steps.
The Art of “Making” Photographs
Jon
So you met them all at the same time on a Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles circa 1993. I don't take a lot of photos, but I prefer to shoot people when they don't expect it. How did it go?
Brian
The idea is nice in theory, however with an attention to detail and understanding of gesture you can create a moment where it feels like people are behaving in a way where they're not being watched. Or at least, you can create something that disrupts the idea that everything that they're doing is for the camera, basically. And that's what it is, that's what photography is!
You create your moments basically, and the difference between somebody that does it in an amateur way or in a way where it's not, you know, I have to be able to repeat it. I have to be able to make that happen every time no matter who it is, no matter if I know them really well or I've just met them five minutes ago, I have to be able to make that feeling, that gesture.
That moment has to almost feel repeatable in order for me to be successful and have some control over it, so that it can be generative, so that you can actually make things that feel like something, and that's it.
In that period I used to call it "Go for a walk!" So, we go for a walk, and then you find somewhere where there's an interesting piece of light, you find something where there's an interesting piece of architecture, like a stairwell or something. And then you just try to kind of maneuver something into that space, and then you make images of it. And then you move really quick, and you don't overthink. And really it's actually that stupid! But it does occasionally yield moments, sometimes it doesn't. I mean, you just have to...
Jon
Seize the moment?
Brian
... Seize the moment, persevere, and hopefully it will be something. And what's weird is that those photos for example, at the time to me, were failures. You know what I mean? That's the reason that I never scanned them, that's why I never printed them, they just sat there! But then here we are, like 28 years later and well now they have a different kind of cachet entirely. They're the only photos of those guys together.
Jon
But what did you want to achieve then?
Brian
In those days, it was to make some photos of them with the notion that if somebody wanted to write something about them, that we had a decent photo that we could use next to the piece of writing, basically.
Jon
For me they’re iconic! Let's take the Quannum Spectrum poster that came with the Solesides Greatest Bumps boxset released in 2000, do you remember this one?