269 words · 1 min
Thru My Eyes: Thoughts on Tupac Amaru Shakur in Pictures and Words
Photo book by video director Gobi covering Tupac's last year, 1995-96, with a foreword by Afeni Shakur. Published by Atria Books in 2005.
- Author
- Gobi (Gobi M. Rahimi), video director and producer; he followed up in 2015 with His Life Through My Eyes
- Foreword
- Afeni Shakur
- Published
- 2005, Atria Books, New York
- Length
- xvi + 157 pages
- ISBN
- 0-7434-5700-5
- Language
- English; no German edition known
Thru My Eyes is a photo book and memoir from Tupac’s closest working circle in his final months. The author goes simply by Gobi (full name Gobi M. Rahimi, per book-trade listings); he shot music videos with Tupac during that period and, according to the publisher, was also a business partner and friend. The actual title is spelled “Thru”not “Through”and the subtitle reads “Pictures”not “Picures”. The page address keeps the misspelling so existing links keep working.
About the book
What it covers
At its heart are about fifty photographs from 1995 and 1996, many of them previously unpublished according to the publisher. They show Tupac on video sets and in the studio, but also off duty and goofing around, dressed up as Rick James, for instance, and playing with children. Gobi’s text runs alongside the pictures and describes how he experienced working with Tupac. The book sets out to show a lighter side than the image of the hard-edged Death Row star.
Assessment
A first-hand personal photo book, backed by the family, as the foreword by Afeni Shakur shows. It is a valuable record of the Death Row period but not meant as a biography: the text is a friend’s memory and interpretation, not a critical account. A commonly cited page count (96) could not be confirmed; library catalogs list 157 pages.
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