Sunny Bak is a fashion photographer that, by chance, found herself shooting for the Beasties during the “License To Ill” era. The story (as told to Jay-Z’s Life And Times Blog) is that the Beasties used to hang around Sunny’s photo studio with all these models she was shooting, and that’s how she met them. Sunny used to just throw the boys into her photos because she needed someone to test the light out on. Haha. Later on, when they got a deal, they called her up, and asked if they could use the photos, and hire her.
Last Thursday (the day before MCA passed), I attended an opening for Sunny’s show with Cey Adams of rarely seen photos from the Beasties in the early 80s. It’s actually still up at 675 Hudson St/Ivy Brown Gallery. We ended up meeting Sunny through a mutual friend over there, and were pretty amazed at her down-to-earth nature.
I just dug this video up above, that sees Sunny being interviewed about the photos she contributed to the “Kings Of Rock” show at Rush Arts Gallery last month. She’s got some great stories to tell, and this video doesn’t even have 300 hits, so I’m sure they’re stories you haven’t heard.
