All Eyes On Me is a long-term labor of love by Paris-based photographer Maï Lucas. Shot between 1990 and 2010, her pictures capture hip-hop and street culture of Afro-American and Hispanic New York from Coney Island and Jones Beach to Harlem and East New York. Those were the years in which young people of color turned against the pre-existing codes and invented new styles in order to express their identities and their pride artistically. It’s as if they were out to supplant the established hip-hop phenomenon, which had become way too much about wealth and luxury, with a counter-culture of their own. Approaching her subjects with respect, empathy and love, Maï Lucas produces photographs of candid authenticity, grace and deep humanity. She brings out the beauty of a youth scene whose creativity finds expression in its everyday attire and family life as well as in its ecstatic dancing and partying. Lucas’s protagonists shine in her portrayals.
Born in Paris in 1968 to a Vietnamese mother and a French father, Maï Lucas began taking pictures as a teenager when her father gave her a camera. Photography has been her medium of artistic expression ever since. As a young girl caught up in the exciting and yet tender whirlwind of the nascent hip hop scene in Paris, she documented her girlhood through the lens of a Nikon FM2. A number of the young hip hop artists she portrayed at the time went on to become leading figures in the French music and movie scene, and whose aesthetic and lifestyle have become all the rage today.
