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Music

We Spoke to the Melbourne Photographer Caught in the Middle of a Twitter Beef With Danny Brown

Danny Brown didn’t credit a photo, got angry at the response and ended up inviting people to his hotel to ‘pull up’.

Image: Michelle Grace Hunder

During his Melbourne performance last week Danny Brown was snapped by photographer Michelle Grace Hunder. The Detroit rapper later posted one of Hunder’s photos on his Instagram, without crediting her or Howl & Echoes, the publication she was shooting for that night.

When asked to provide a photo credit, Danny took to Twitter and replied with “How bout I just deleted them since of guys are so butt hurt”.

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Brown maintains he didn’t ask for any photos to be taken and a Twitter beef soon developed, culminating in Brown challenging music writer Nic Kelly to a fight. Brown even tweeted Kelly his hotel detais so he could “pull up” and “have a good time”.

With the Twitter beef taking most of the attention, we reached out to Michelle to get her side.

NOISEY: What do you think of Danny’s argument that he didn’t ask to have his photo taken?
Michelle Grace Hunder: Music photographers aren’t allowed access to big shows like that without prior approval from artist’s management and PR. You have to be shooting for a publication. You can’t just be anyone with a camera and rock up to a show. The implied consent from management to shoot Danny is that we are there to cover the show, and the publication will then write and review with accompanying photos to promote the artists and usually the rest of the tour. You’d also assume if he didn’t like having his photos taken, then why would he retweet our photo set and use one of them for his socials? He obviously liked and appreciated them?

In the ensuing Twitter beef Brown invited music writer Nic Kelly to his hotel to “pull up”. Would have gone with him?
I found all that drama really embarrassing to be honest. I wish it didn't come to that. It’s not what I ever wanted to happen.

Could the whole problem been fixed with a simple credit?
Yes. This happens all the time. Artists sometimes forget, we totally get that. Generally, the publication or I will message the artists asking them to add it on socials, and most of the time that happens and it’s all cool. Nothing else was being asked here.

Quite often, music photographers are not paid for their time. The way we get noticed is through artists tagging our work when they repost on socials. It often leads to paid work down the track, or it least it has in my instance where I now have a full time business shooting artists and musicians. Speaking out was for the guys who are starting out. We really don’t think it’s asking too much to add a little photo credit, and mostly it is done right away.

Has this incident changed your opinion of Danny?
It has definitely, and I really did love his music. This was the third time I'd put my hand up to shoot his show, but I've definitely lost respect for him for not seeing this was a simple issue of just recognising another artist’s work.

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