‘Catch The Beat: The Roots of Punk and Hip Hop Photography’ opens at The Morrison Hotel Gallery this Friday, showcasing the photographs of Janette Beckman and David Corio. The pair were photographers for rival papers in London in the late 70s, before Janette moved to NYC to start taking photographs of the emerging hip hop scene. When David moved to the Big Apple ten years later, the pair became friends and realized they were doing the same job, just across the pond.

The series features original photos of legends like Run DMC, Ice T, Biggie, Ian Dury, Grandmaster Flash, The Stranglers, Eric B and Rakim and more. As the artists themselves say:

This exhibition is the first time we have been able to show our Punk and Hip Hop images together – and may be the first time that both music genres have been seriously exhibited alongside each other. Whereas photographs of other musicians from the 1970’s to the 1990’s are often shown in galleries, it is refreshing to see that there are also exciting images from these two important genres that changed the world of music. We hope this exhibition will help viewers to realize how important Punk and Hip Hop are to the history of music and photography.