Urban Bloggers… Unmasked!

Industry veteran turned Blogger Combat Jack balancing family and internets.

“Since the face been revealed, game got real.”

Photographer Alexander Richter has just posted a series of excellent portraits called The Internets: Faces Behind The Screens. Richter has been interviewing and taking photos of the people behind his favorite web content for this ongoing project, intended to become a photo book in the future.

The subjects thus far are rap news household name eskay of Nah Right, blogger/video blogger/Internets Celebrity Dallas Penn, filmmakers Dan “The Man” Melamid (helmed the video for Prodigy’s “Mac 10 Handle”) and Court Dunn, industry lawyer turned author/blog impresario Reggie Osse aka Combat Jack, radio personality Emilio Sparks, and blogging music makers DJ Eleven and Illmind.

There are a lot of terrific shots in the collection. Richter puts an emphasis on the tools of the trade these new media creators use. Apartments become studios and computer desks editing stations. Check out eskay hunched over his mobile phone on a city stoop, Dan the Man’s steadicam harness and Dallas Penn wielding his camcorder like a pistol.

The closeup of Dallas is a special one too, the contrast of the real world he inhabits on the elevated subway platform against the golden hued reflection in his shades. The scene in his sunglasses is a Hollywood technicolor vision of the city, an apt fit for the larger-than-life vision of a web video star, who also has written up cinematic transformations of his life growing up in the city.

We also see some nods in the set to the blogger as family man. In the photo at the top of this post, our man Combat Jack is holding it down in the bustle of his packed house. In another pic, the Dora potty in the corner of eskay’s living room give us a clue what unseen forces fueled the daily grind that brought Nah Right to prominence.

Speaking of bloggers unmasked, last week I hit up that Bring Your Own Blogger BBQ Dallas and Combat Jack put together. I got there late and missed some people that I wanted to talk to but I saw some old friends and got familiar with some new faces as well like MekDot, Gooch, B-Fred, Drew Ricketts, the Ambassador, etc. It’s nice connecting with folks in this thing of ours. Maybe Dallas is right and I should get out of the house more often.

Here’s a shot of me from that evening with some random people including DJ Statik Selektah.

Yes, I’m wearing a t-shirt with a squirrel riding a bicycle, his name is Nutsy. I got it for supporting the high exalted public radio show The Sound of Young America. Jealous?

One last note on getting to know the faces of your neighborly bloggers. That bad-ass chica in the upper right of this page holding up the Illmatic record is Logan. Her hobbies are rap nerdery, funky records and bringing sexy back. She’s apparently 5′7″ and so is her blog.

Alexander, since the series is still ongoing, where the female blogger photos at?