Brick Stowell’s friendship with Tyler, the Creator began with a trade.
More than a decade ago, the rapper and producer was standing on the sidewalk with his fellow Odd Future members following a show at the Airliner in East Los Angeles when Stowell, then a stranger, walked by wearing a covetable Supreme jersey. The nascent star had already learned to flex his celebrity muscles and asked Stowell for the jersey point-blank. “He kept insisting,” Stowell recalls. “I was walking away when I thought, Oh, this is the moment, right here.” Deciding to seize it, the young photographer agreed to give up the short on the condition that Tyler and the rest of OF come to his studio for a shoot.
“The rest is history,” Stowell says, and it many ways it was. That shoot solidified Stowell’s place in Odd Future’s burgeoning entourage—a hotbed of designers, producers, skaters, and the like—as a tireless documenter of the rap collective’s place in cultural history, archivist of its members' countless exploits and run-ins with the law, and tour manager. When the group disbanded in 2016 after a heady five-year rise, its core members had become household names, synonymous with an era in hip hop that Stowell describes as “absolutely batshit—so free and creative.”
Last weekend, Stowell’s fast trove of ephemera and photography debuted at the 12th iteration of Camp Flog Gnaw, a two-day festival with a lineup curated by Tyler. Titled “Almost Famous,” the on-site exhibition—and the first exhibition to be sanctioned by the musician—offered visitors a chance to unearth the breadth of Stowell’s archive, from police reports and backstage passes to drunken polaroids and BTS shots that reveal the intimacy and spontaneity at the heart of one of the most generative moments in music culture this century.
Though Stowell had had no intention of mounting a survey, he asserts that it wasn’t a matter of if he would share the countless boxes of negatives, posters, art objects, and ephemera he had saved since 2011, but when. And while Flog Gnaw has come and gone, can be experienced in the form of Stowell’s debut volume—also titled Almost Famous—and the exhibition is set to travel.
“They would always say, ‘Why do we have to go to these tourist spots?’” Stowell recalls. “I’d reply, ‘You'll thank me in 10 years.'" Now, just over 10 years later, the photographer gives CULTURED a peek at some of the most meaningful pieces in the exhibition.
CULTURED: How long have you known Tyler?
Brian Stowell: In 2010, Tyler and the boys were becoming a thing on Fairfax [where Golf Wang, the musician’s streetwear brand, opened]. They were a really exciting group of kids, and everybody was watching them from afar. At that time, their shows weren't big. They played at the Airliner where Low End Theory used to be. I was starting to play around with photography, and went to the show to take photos that night. On my way out, I said hi to the boys—this photo is in the show—and I was wearing a gray Supreme baseball jersey. Tyler said, “Let me buy that jersey off of you.” He kept insisting. I was walking away when I thought, Oh, this is the moment, right here. So I I offered to give him the jersey off my back for an Odd Future photoshoot at my studio. He went, “Done, easy.” And the rest is history.
I was a no-name photographer. Two weeks later, these kids pull up to the studio. I gave them five cans of spray paint. They absolutely destroyed the space and I shot it on film. It got to a point where we were moving so fast that they were asking me to shoot everything. Literally, "Hey can you shoot this album cover, can you shoot this magazine cover…" It was moving at such a rapid pace that it was hard for me to keep up. That’s when I was hired.
CULTURED: So the work in “Almost Famous” begins with that first shoot in your studio.
Stowell: It's all from 2011 to 2016. So the pieces in the show are all from that period—all the ephemera, the arrest reports, the riot reports, the fingerprints, the concert tickets.
CULTURED: Can you walk through a couple of the most meaningful pieces in the show?
Stowell: You see the big billboard that says “Goblin,” where Tyler's face is overlaid with donuts? That’s the most important piece to me because the billboard was placed on top of what used to be Amoeba Records on Sunset Boulevard. It’s the first album cover I ever shot and, funnily enough, it was actually a BTS shot from Tyler's music video “Yonkers.” For me, that was the moment I became a professional photographer. This was a long-time dream for me, to be in hip hop history. I included it in this show because this was when I realized I was.
CULTURED: Wow.
Stowell: Next is this photo of a giant group of people on stage at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, right after Earl Sweatshirt came back from Samoa. For me, what was so special about that time was the energy, everybody just having each other's back. We rolled 20 deep, we’d travel around the world, and everyone was just completely crazy.
You’ve got skater and model Sage Elsesser, founding member of Odd Future and The Internet Syd Tha Kyd, Frank Ocean, The Bear star Lionel Boyce, Trash Talk Singer Lee Spielman, and so many more. There are a lot of group shots in the show, and they’re really the heaviest ones, because that's what it used to be like, and you can’t get that back. We'd roll around like this little Boy Scout troop full of crazy teenagers who were crazy talented. It was very summer camp style.
CULTURED: What do you think made this moment in music history so unique?
Stowell: These guys were absolutely batshit—so free and creative. There was a moment in the ’80s and ’90s when all the punk dudes would hang out with hip hop dudes—Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys. I saw that happening with Odd Future and Trash Talk in the early 2000s or 2010, so I would keep forcing them together into photos. They’d be like, Fucking Brick, the fucking camp counselor making us take a picture in front of the Bean in Chicago. Why do we have to go to these tourist spots? I just said, You'll thank me in 10 years.
