RIP: July 2009 Archives

George Pitts: Notes On Vibe Magazine

As news swept around last week, in e-mails and trending Twitter topics, that Hip Hop bible Vibe would be the latest magazine to close its doors, the response was felt deeply throughout the SPD community. As many wrote to us to point out, the obit for Vibe written by David Carr of The New York Times was a thoughtful and generous reflection, but said too little about the creative teams who have worked to elevate Hip Hop and the specific culture Vibe both reflected, and created. We asked George Pitts, Vibe's founding Photography Director, for his thoughts about Vibe's place in our collective history, and are honored to share those here:

In what was an unprecedented week of devastating losses to our culture, including the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and the great visionary choreographer Pina Bausch, it was also the week that Vibe magazine folded. The close of Vibe is obviously an event of great personal impact for me, as its first Photography Director, and I've received enough notices from well-wishers to understand that the magazine meant a lot of things to a diverse community of readers.

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