Aaliyah Homecoming Celebration Exhibit
Detroit School of Arts
123 Selden St.
Detroit
Monday, November 9
Walking through photographer Andre Smith’s exhibitions makes you realize we’re missing something in the social media era.
Smith built his career as a red carpet and concert photographer, capturing the glitz and glamour of celebrities pouring into an awards show or performing on stage. His work has appeared all over the place over the years, including in The Detroit News and inside the printed pages of Black Enterprise and Ebony.
Back then, you’d really only come across these images in the glossy magazines that Smith has shot for. Today, on social media, you can see them constantly. That makes the biggest of celebrities seem not so far away. They’re not so rare. You’re not seeing them once a month when your favorite new magazine comes out. You’re seeing them like it’s court-ordered every day, popping into your algorithm and polluting the feed.
So, when you walk through Smith’s latest exhibit, it feels like “back in the day,” like you’re flipping through the magazine, reading the little blurbs about each celebrity and slowly watching the evolution of fashion through the photos. In this case, Smith’s photographs act as a time capsule of R&B and hip-hop through the 1980s to today with lots of special Detroit moments sprinkled in.
Smith’s exhibit Aaliyah Homecoming Celebration is really a minor addition of Aaliyah photographs to a much larger touring exhibition called Hip Hop Evolution: Celebrating 50 Years of Hip Hop Photography. It was displayed last year inside of the Wayne County Community College District’s Downtown Art Gallery. Smith has made a concerted effort to make sure these exhibitions have an educational focus, both in their content and where they’re physically placed.
And this version of the exhibit — now with more Aaliyah! — follows that focus. It’s also displayed inside of a school. This time, it’s on display through December 19, open to the public every Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. at the Detroit School of Arts in the Ford Motor Company Theatre Lobby.
Back in 2001, a few months before Aaliyah tragically died in a plane crash, Smith met Detroit’s “princess of R&B” on the red carpet at the Essence Music Awards in New York City. They immediately connected over being from Detroit. Smith has had many celebrity interactions in his career, but this one stuck with him. So much so that he had to put on an exhibit in her honor, an opening that featured family members and former members of her band at the VIP opening back in October.
Because it’s inside a school, the exhibit is a little tricky to get to, but it’s worth the trip. It’s clearly designed with the students in mind, even if many of them don’t know who Aaliyah is, or who any of these other icons of another era actually are. It covers three floors and Smith actually had a little makeshift record store built out for the students, who he admits probably don’t know what a compact disc or a cassette tape looks like.
There are some deliciously deep-cut Detroit musical moments captured here, like when Jay-Z rolled through Cass Tech and was given a sweatshirt from a bunch of students. Do you think he still has it in his closet? Or like when Boyz II Men rolled through the city and did a meet-and-greet at the McDonald’s at Lahser and Eight Mile (still there today!) in the early ’90s.
And the best part? It’s like you stepped into a time machine, flipping through your favorite magazine again, watching hip-hop history unfold before your eyes… just like back in the day before social media made it feel like a fire hose was blasting content at your face 24/7.
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