In 1986, when Maï Lucas began photographing her friends, Vincent Cassel, Léa Drucker, JoeyStarr, Isabel Marant, they were not yet actors, rappers or fashion designers, nor the stars they had become. They are barely 20 years old and belong to the same cultural movement: Parisian hip-hop, a melting pot of daddy’s boys and young people from the city, lower middle-class women from upmarket neighborhoods and street smarts from the suburbs. A selection of his images full of energy, testimonies of this bubbling era, is on display until Tuesday 1is February on the gates of the square of the Saint-Jacques tower, in Paris. They are taken from the book by Maï Lucas, Hip Hop Diary of a Fly Girl 1986-1996 Paris (Offer. Paris, 2021). The 50-year-old is indeed a fly girl, an untranslatable phrase in French. She explains : “A woman from this hip-hop movement, determined, who knows what she wants, who doesn’t let herself be pushed around, who wants to make her contribution, who understands this culture in all its forms, graffiti, dance, rap, DJ. »
Ironically, the one who captured these twenty-nine pictures taken in large format (2 meters by 1.50 meters) grew up a few steps away, rue des Lombards, and discovered New York hip-hop in the trendy clubs in the area: Serge Kruger’s Tango and Les Bains Douches, rue du Bourg-l’Abbé. His linguist father, professor of ancient Chinese, married to his Vietnamese mother, gave him a camera for his 14th birthday, a Canon FTb.
She never ceases, then, to take pictures of her high school friends who want to become models or actors. She abandons her studies and goes out a lot in the trendy clubs of Les Halles: “At the time, I wasn’t into hip-hop yet, but more with fashion people, much older than me. I meet Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Grace Jones, Philippe Krootchey, host of Radio Nova then editor-in-chief of the magazine Stubborn. I go to the Bains Douches with my friends, Léa Drucker and Isabel Marant. »
A body language
During a trip to New York, she met Vincent Cassel, whom she photographed for her first portfolio: “He had not yet done the slightest play”, she recalls. He introduces her to the Solo dancer, who has become a rapper, at the Bains: “With him and his companion Gigie, summarizes Mai Lucas, I discover a whole universe committed to hip-hop. I am struck by so much creativity coming from the street. I am caught up in this movement created by street youth: they are my age, are multicultural like me… They are gay, funny, they offer their culture for free. I become a fly girl. The hipsters of Les Halles were great, but it was also a very sad period, with the onset of AIDS. It is the carnage. Les Bains Douches was 60% heroin addicted. »
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