The temperature of his photographs is uniformly cool, emotionally aloof, and tactically dry. His photographs benefit from this stance, because his subjects are all powerful in their reputations as Hip Hop giants.

Strategically, Christian Witkin affects an indifference to their celebrity, in order to dispel the familiarity of their media images. By leaving that familiarity behind, by eschewing the typical warmth associated with the entertainment idiom, Witkin backs away from the attitude of hero worship, to establish instead a dialogue with the individual look, ethnic style, and temporal presence of these musicians. The visual noise identified with the fame, lyrical content and performing mode of each artist is withheld from the depiction of their portraits, and yet hovers in the mind of the viewer – a ghostly unbidden media reading that is contrasted with the figure we do see. This distancing that occurs organically within the structure of perception, when a photographer delivers his vision (as opposed to the cultural preconception of a celebrity) is what gives Witkin’s portraits their distinct singularity.

Witkin works in a severely reductive spatial context that naturally enhances the graphic impact of his portraiture. One is left with the available physical facts to define the look of each artist: a specific hairstyle, the spare presence of jewellery, the sculptural effect of a hooded sweatshirt, the tightness of a doo-rag. It is as if Witkin is saying in the economy of his focus that this is enough. Enough to know that this is that celebrity, and enough to define the portrait, but not that the celebrity is defined by these things. It is a mental sleight of hand, that enables the viewer to perceive a subject as freshly as possible, while still honouring their presence as stars. Witkin imbues a concrete, almost sculptural effect over the proceedings, which is an earmark of his black and white work. His figures are so solidly there, that they assume the character of icons. By working through his assured minimalist process, Witkin conversely enlarges the dimension of the individual, while stripping away the extraneous details that become the ephemera of pop culture. His subjects, these very different kinds of rappers, are given a poise that concurs with both our received notions of their coolness and their own inherent dignity.

LL Cool J couldn’t be presented in a more straightforward manner than in Witkin’s portrait. The epic mask of his head imposes itself powerfully while withholding a cartoonish expression of emotion. Instead, LL peers outwardly in full possession of his inner richness. It is a duality that plays out with constancy in Witkin’s work. In locating the structural idiom through which to depict the figure, Witkin is able to stage the doubleness of presence that we all carry within our bearing.

In his subtle delineation of rap poet Nas, Witkin unearths the ghetto cool and sublime elusiveness that informs the inscrutability of his face. Nas is looking at you, but it is the viewer’s sense of security that is being staged. The scowling, wary, black male gaze is so rich with ambiguity that one inevitably sifts through the range of cultural projections associated with his expression.

If it is possible to capture the brilliance of someone who is brilliant, then perhaps in Witkin’s abruptly cropped portrait of Nas, we are given the image which enables a generously complex reading of his nature.

Rakim, pioneer virtuoso of rap phrasing, flow, and terse lyrical wit, is given in his portrait, the presence of standard bearer, rap master, and anonymous ghetto thug. Because certain articles of clothing render all men generic, but particularly for young black men, wearing “hoodies” is an especially indelible stereotype. Rakim, no doubt, has survived, even to this day, remaining relevant, perhaps because he can disappear in plain sight, remaining everyman, while refining his persona into a lean catalogue of mannerisms that confirm his realness. Rakim’s performance is effortless, but photogenic in the extreme. The charismatic tyranny of the stereotype ensures that the viewer, the reader of the photograph, will recognize the type (and therefore the milieu, the subculture, and body language) long before specific recognition of Rakim comes into play.

In some of Witkin’s work, there is a bend toward the beautiful, even when his analytical scrutiny savours the unadorned physical facts of his subjects. A preoccupation with light informs virtually all his portraits. Instead of harnessing light to obliterate certain details, Witkin appears to employ it to give definition and appropriate tonal weight to his subjects. His use of light can also serve as a beautifying element, as in his portrait of rapper Eve, a rigorously simple composition, in which her regal almost Egyptian profile achieves an ethereal density. A metal choker wreathes her neck, as Eve elegantly leans her head toward the available light.

The handsome, spectral Method Man gives the closest thing to a theatrical performance in this gallery of musicians. Holding a razor blade between his lips, Method Man stares out, surrounded by darkness. His watery gaze, a mixture of the sinister and the vulnerable, is as forbidding as his reputation. Although lending his gothic Darth Vader persona for the occasion of this portrait, Method Man doesn’t appear to suffer fools gladly. He has a way with props, coaxing a dangerous expression by means of the razorblade. In the pantheon of bad boys, Method Man excels at putting across a smoky, brooding nihilism. A maestro of twisted, richly urban stoner free verse, Method Man assumes the role of town bard, shrouded in the generic darkness of a court painting.

Witkin references his Dutch ancestry in the detached clinical intensity of his images. The standard set by Rembrandt with his agenda of objectivity defused by warm rendering is a perceptual mode that can be construed as a regional style. Witkin’s contemporaries, such as Rineke Dijkstra and Dana Lixenberg, share a healthy scepticism toward the charms of personality. Witkin adopts a more consciously American studio approach that carries on with the graphic rigour established by Avedon and Penn. But given the character of his subjects and the cultural moment of their popular success, Witkin characteristically chooses to carve away the distracting trappings of their fame, to focus on the physical essence before his camera. An illusion of pure being is offered as the document of his attention.