My dad's Nigerian, and I remember going to Nigeria, and all of these kids and adults and everyone in-between knew who TuPac was. They had TuPac t-shirts, TuPac posters, TuPac cassettes... everyone knew TuPac, and sometimes that was the only English that they spoke, was TuPac lyrics.
I used to spend a lot of time cutting out film posters from papers and putting them up on the wall in my room.
In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.
I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.
My grandmother introduced me to B.B. King. She wasn't someone who had a lot of posters, but there was a big poster of B.B. King on the wall as soon as you walked into her house in Meridian, Mississippi.
When I was a child, I had posters of James Dean in my room. I was a big admirer of his work and was fascinated by him living on the edge. Looking back, my life was kind of the same.
My friend Danny Clinch, who's a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It's hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They're all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, 'Don't sell out!'
I saw the first 'House Party' - not the other 10. I love pop culture references. If you saw 'Moneyball', watch it again, looking for all the Clash posters.
When Mike Tyson was only 18, his managers used to market him on posters, reminding you that if your grandfather had missed Joe Louis, or your father Muhammad Ali, don't you miss Tyson.
I write back to all the soldiers who write to me and send them posters and calendars.
