Music
Meet Gunner Stahl, the "only hip-hop cameraman living like a rapper"
We caught up with Atlanta photographer Stahl at the launch of his new photo book, Portraits, which features candid images of Mac Miller, Playboi Carter, Billie Eilish and many more.
Two of hip-hop’s brightest stars Metro Boomin and Playboy Carti are among those walking around a photography exhibition in an Atlanta warehouse. Apart from the long line leading up to the building’s garage door, and a pink poster with the name of the event on it, the white brick building is unassuming and nondescript. Through the doors, the exhibition doubles as a release party for Gunner Stahl’s Portraits, the prominent hip-hop photographer’s third photo book and his first with a major publisher (ABRAMS).
Inside, posted in frames along the walls and in large prints hanging from the ceiling, Carti is one of the subjects in the exhibition, as is Metro Boomin, who can be seen in one shot wearing glasses and a black du-rag, with one leg hanging out of a white car. The suicide door is open, giving a glimpse into the luxurious life of a famed rap producer. Still, everything else about the shot serves as a reminder that Metro Boomin, even with all his hits, is just an everyday person.
Metro Boomin and Gunner Stahl
© Linnea Stephan
Standing next to this candid portrait, fans clamour around the snapper responsible, Gunner Stahl, while photographers direct their lenses at him in order to capture the moment. Young fans thank the 26-year-old for inspiring them to pick up a camera and ask him to sign copies of his new book. For the reserved Stahl, the adulation he’s received since releasing Portraits, from his hometown and beyond, has been surreal.
There aren’t many photographers who've gained the level of recognition and access Stahl has within the hip-hop community. These “hip-hop photographers” – increasingly influencers in their own right – aren’t just living off their photos. They’re selling merch to their legions of followers and collaborating with brands just like the rappers they’re taking images of. In a Q&A with Stahl that appears in Portraits, the rapper Swae Lee (one-half of Rae Sremmurd) tells Stahl that he’s the “only cameraman living like a f***ing rapper.” With the release of Portraits, it’s clear that the photographer's star is only rising.
It’s been less than a decade since the 26-year-old, raised on the westside of Atlanta in Bankhead, purchased his first camera and started documenting the lives of his friends. “I bought a camera for my 18th birthday,” Stahl tells us. “There wasn’t a driving factor [for getting into photography]. I was just bored and didn’t know what to buy for my birthday.”
Nipsey Hussle
© Gunner Stahl
A product of his hometown – a buzzing entertainment hub where celebrities seem more accessible – as well as the decade in which he came of age, Stahl’s early years as a photographer benefited from the fact that he was friends with all the right people. This guaranteed access to private moments others might not be privy to.
As highlighted in his Portraits interview with Swae Lee, Stahl’s career can be traced through the lives of his friends in the rap industry. B Wright, the photographer’s manager, was a student at Morehouse University, in Atlanta, when he started managing local rap collective, Two-9. And it was through them that he first met Stahl, then still a young high school student.
“We would just go to shows and he was basically shooting the videos and the content,” Wright says. “He got introduced to film photography somewhere in between that and started falling back from doing video work and doing strictly film photography.”
It wasn’t always smooth sailing, though. In Portraits, Stahl recalls shooting 21 Savage for the first time and forgetting to remove the lens cap from his camera, resulting in the photos being “straight black.” (“I was convinced he was a vampire until I realised the lens cap was on,” he says.)
21 Savage
© Gunner Stahl
Wright eventually went on to work as head of marketing for Mike WiLL Made-It’s Ear Drummer Records, where he would often enlist Stahl to shoot artists. Eventually, Stahl began to gain traction for his portraits. For about a year, he posted a monthly gallery of his candid shots and portraits on IllRoots. It was around this time, says Stahl, that he really started to think about photography as a long-term vocation. “I didn’t really know it could be a career until [2016],” he recalls.
Around the time that Stahl started to master his craft as a film photographer, rappers like Young Thug, Rae Sremmurd and Trinidad James were gaining traction both inside and outside of Atlanta, pushing the boundaries of rap music and helping pave the way for hip-hop to become the dominant genre. Stahl was in the right place at the right time and his relationship with the artists he shoots, as well as his ability to capture candid moments, makes him both a driving force behind hip-hop culture, as well as a fierce documentarian of it.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of hip-hop photographers such as Stahl. Today, it’s not uncommon for rappers to hire full-time photographers to chronicle their lives. Brands have partnered directly with these photographers, benefiting from their cultural currency. But, even a decade ago, this was not the case.
“I really think the person [who] changed that was Wiz [Khalifa],” says Stahl. “I know I probably helped it, but that was Wiz. He used to have his day-to-day episodes. He was really one of the first artists to start showing his life to people.”
Miley Cyrus
© Gunner Stahl
With social media numbers to rival up and coming artists, Stahl now creates merch and photo books for his fans, often in soft pink in a nod to his late mother who died of breast cancer. More than 550,000 people follow Stahl on Instagram, liking his often caption-less photos of A$AP Rocky among yellow smiley-face-balloons, a bearded Donald Glover posing in front of a stuffed wolf, Solange holding a snake, Miley Cyrus and more. But aside from a photo of Stahl reading Portraits in Barnes & Noble on the book’s release date, the last photo of the photographer himself is from 2016.
“I don’t really like social media like that, but I know [it’s] a huge part of my brand,” Stahl says. “I always try to save as much as possible. People like more tangible items. Something they can actually hold.” The photographer says he sold his first two books online, but he’s always dreamt of having his work appear in brick-and-mortar shops.
Still, the success of his photo exhibition, plus the news that book shops have sold out of Portraits, has taken Stahl by surprise. “It’s been overwhelming,” he says. “I didn’t think people would actually get in their car and go buy [the book].”
Encased in pink, Portraits spans more than 150 pages and features previously unpublished photos of the late rapper Mac Miller (including photos from a session taken shortly before the rapper’s death in 2018), Playboi Carti and many others.
Nipsey Hussle
© Linnea Stephan
Gunner Stahl laps up the adulation
© Linnea Stephan
A$AP Rocky
© Linnea Stephan
Kid Cudi
© Linnea Stephan
The book kicks off with a note from Naomi Zeichner, former editor-in-chief for FADER, about the time Stahl cold-pitched a Two-9 music video he'd directed to her via her personal email. “This is a personal email address,” Zeichner replied, according to a published screenshot of the pair’s first exchange in 2013. “I won’t address any music enquiries here, please remove me from your mailing list.”
A few years later, though, he popped up unannounced at the FADER office to meet with staff and, eventually, the publication started commissioning him. Stahl’s 2016 FADER cover featuring portraits of The Internet is included in the book. Portraits also features a Q&A with photographer Chi Modu and photos that were on display at Stahl’s exhibition during Red Bull Music Festival Atlanta.
Gunner Stahl clearly isn’t very comfortable being the subject of his fans' attention. But with the young photographer's unique style resonating with hip-hop artists and obsessives alike, he’d better start getting used to it.