Andre 3000

Andre 3000 - June 19th 2014 - Esquire Magazine - Wax N Facts Record Store - Atlanta Georgia

If you know me you know I moved to Atlanta in 2001 because I wanted to meet/shoot Outkast. I ended up fulfilling that dream in 2005 for i-D magazine. The photos I shot are terrible, let me just be honest. I did green screen for some unknown reason inside a cramped hotel room on another media day shoot. This time I was competing with 30 shooters. I blew it, really I did. This haunted me for close to ten years, serious, it really messed me up. Fast forward to 2014, I received a call from Esquire Magazine asking if I would be interested in shooting Andre 3000? HA! Of course I was interested. They told me Andre wanted me to scout some locations and send to them for his approval. I ended up spending a week scouring the ATL. Nothing really got him excited. He asked me to scout the Little 5 Points area, which i didn’t do in my initial scout because I felt he was too big to shoot in Lil 5, that too many people would recognize him. We all ended up choosing Wax N Facts record store as the location. Wax N Facts wouldn’t let me pay them a location fee to shut it down for a couple of hours, they said its fine, come in with your artist and shoot, we don’t want to shut down for our loyal customers. I told them it was a pretty high profile artist and still they wouldn’t shut it down. This made me sleepless the night before as you want to have some sort of control of your location but I didn’t have a choice. Andre pulled up to the main Lil 5 Points parking lot in his Land Rover. He walks up to me and said nice to see you again. Im freaking out, Andre is solo, seems to remember me and is excited to shoot! Don’t blow it Zach I kept telling myself. As we walked into Wax N Facts the old guys running the store are obviously stunned at the sight of 3 stacks. They immediately asked if I wanted to see the back room, we all said YES! We walked up some steps and came across the location this photo was taken in. I did not style this photo, there was a tiny opening in the floor that Andre sat right into, it was like we all knew that was the spot. I didn’t light this either, there was a perfectly imperfect skylight right above Andre. The rest is history. I was literally shaking while I shot this photo because i just fucking knew I was redeeming myself. Andre and I ended up shooting for another couple of hours around Little 5 Points, and I swear to god not one single person out on the streets recognized him. He just had an energy of a normal person if that makes sense, he was asking for all eyes to be on him.

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