Three decades behind the scenes of the music industry

Eddie Otchere’s ‘Spirit Behind the Lens’ is a story of music and culture that crosses and transcends borders.

In 2001, photographer Eddie Otchere spent two weeks hanging around with Jennifer Lopez. She had just released her second album J.Lo, and had become the first woman to hold both a number one album and film at the same time thanks to her role alongside Matthew McConaughey in romcom The Wedding Planner. She was one of, if not the most, in-demand people on planet earth.

But having been given the opportunity to photograph and video Lopez, seeing the way that she lived and how those who surrounded her treated the star, Otchere found himself leaving his camera to one side. “I was only able to take one shot,” he recalls. “It was at the point in her career when she had the largest entourage in music history at that time – it was huge, because everyone was eating off her talent. Everyone was putting hotel rooms and lavish dinners on her bill, which would be paid for by her royalty cheques – she felt to me like the loneliest person in the world, even when she was with people.”

He even voiced his unease to one of her backup dancers, Cristan Judd, who is best known for a brief, two-year marriage with Lopez. “I remember talking to Cris about J‑Lo, and being concerned about her, then he goes out that week and proposes to her. I thought: ‘There’s a man who’s taking advantage of a situation’” he continues. “I felt really sorry for her, I wish I could have said to her: ‘You’re better than this shit.’”

Realising that she didn’t need more hassle, Otchere went home with just that one shot, using the rest of the film that he had planned to use over those two weeks on taking photographs of his family at Christmas time. Now, that one portrait features in his new photobook Spirit Behind the Lens, which takes a retrospective look at the long-time music photographer and documentarian’s career.

Otchere first picked up a camera after being passed down a Canon Ae‑1 from a relative. Naturally, he began to lean towards his first love, music, and in particular the nascent sounds of hip-hop that had begun to filter across the Atlantic from the East Coast of the USA. “Growing up in Brixton and South London, I was always a lover of music and a collector of music – I bought my first record at the age of 11,” he explains. “I loved the way that music and culture combined to make hip-hop, and it was a beautiful thing to be a part of – feeling how fresh and how new it was.”

As a teenager, he was going to early jungle raves at DIY dancefloors, including the LazerDrome in Peckham. “LazerDrome didn’t have an alcohol licence, which was perfect for a young me, because you didn’t need alcohol,” he says. “To be dancing off your tits on half a pill and some Ribena, was pretty much the zenith – that was it.”

Spirit Behind the Lens is filled with insider’s shots spanning those early years to the present day, from drum & bass icon Goldie mid-gunfinger at a 1996 Metalheadz night to a recent photograph of grime figurehead Kano, via portraits of US hip-hop icons Biggie Smalls and Wu-Tang Clan backdropped by London estates. The pictures provide an unfiltered view of three decades of mostly Black music scenes, with stars – often yet to reach their true peaks of commercial successes – captured in average city scenes and relatable style, without glitzy, high-production sets or styling.

With the proliferation of hip-hop, soundsystem culture from the Caribbean, jungle and drum & bass and even Otchere’s explorations outside of the UK, the book is a story of music and culture that crosses and transcends borders. “We call it the Black Atlantic – this thing that happens between Africa, the USA, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, England – we can look at these points and how interconnected they are,” he says. “We’re literally just broken up by this massive pond, but historically slavery and capitalism is the basis of where we’re at today.

“I was born into reggae, hip-hop culture, I was born into African culture,” he continues. “I can connect every rhythm in the world to a tribe in Africa through records – I wanted to do something similar through pictures and connect everyone together.”