If you’ve heard any hit hip hop song in the last 20 years, Mel D. Cole has probably photographed the artist behind it.
Based in New York City and raised in Syracuse, New York, the 44-year-old photographer picked up a disposable camera in 2002 and started taking pictures of artists who inspired him. Almost two decades later, he’s one of the most accomplished and celebrated photographers on the scene, having worked with superstars including Kanye West, Drake, Sade, Rihanna, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, The Roots, Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Mobb Deep, and many more.
Over the last year though, Mel’s swapped studios and stages for protests and tear gas. So what changed?
“COVID happened,” he told Hack.
New York City went into quarantine and Mel’s gigs disappeared overnight. At the same time COVID hit, protests erupted across the United States after George Floyd was killed by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for nine and a half minutes.
Cole started documenting Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd.
“I always told myself if something big was to happen in my own backyard… that I was going to dedicate myself and my platform to documenting it,” Mel said.
He started documenting the Black Lives Matter movement, which led him to covering Donald Trump supporters and the US election.
Capturing the Capitol riots
Mel’s work has taken him to some pretty chaotic spaces, but none as much as the riots at the US Capitol earlier this month.
“I expected some drama, maybe some pepper spray, maybe, you know, some screaming and yelling,” he said.
But nothing could’ve prepared him for what unfolded.
Cole says he feared for his life while covering the US Capitol riots earlier this month.
“It was scary. I was nervous,” Mel said.
“It [was like] a Tom Cruise movie, or Braveheart or something… people just screaming and yelling, people hanging all over the place and climbing all over things.”
As a person of colour, the job wasn’t just challenging for Mel, it came with serious threats to his life.
“Here I am, a black man in a sea of MAGA supporters [who] have a tendency to not like people of my skin color, or, here’s this guy with a confederate flag waving it right in front of me, or here’s this person with [an] anti-Jewish slogan on his shirt,” he said.
“But most importantly, a lot of the times when I’m shooting things like this I’m specifically scared of the police because they’ll point me out and pepper spray me right in the face in a sea of white people.
A unique perspective
Despite the risks, Mel’s dedicated to capturing this moment in American history and understanding the deep lines that divide his country.
“Partly what I’m trying to do is create a dialogue to show my followers like, look, here, I am a black man having a conversation with people that you might not agree with, I might not agree with, but let’s hear them out and just talk,” he said.
Mel’s work is raw and gritty, evoking a range of emotions from shock, anger and repulsion to inspiration, joy and surprise.
Trump supporters at a rally in Philadelphia in August last year.
Recently, his photographs have focussed on a unique intersection of Trump supporters – young black men.
“They are as much a part of the story as the white people, Asian people, Latin people… just everyone,” he said.
Mel wanted to capture what he was seeing on the ground at protests and rallies, and dispel the myth that all Trump supporters looked and acted in the same way.
“These people are humans just like us and we should treat them accordingly, but also know that this brother is a Donald Trump supporter.”
For more of Mel’s work, check out his Instagram.
A Trump supporter gets his eyes washed after being pepper sprayed by Capitol Police after trying to enter the Capitol Building.
