To help commemorate Aaliyah’s would-be 35th birthday, photographer Eric Johnson shared rare photos and negatives from a stunning Entertainment Weekly spread he shot one month before she died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001.
As per L’Oeil de la Photographie:
In July of her final year, Eric Johnson photographed Aaliyah for Entertainment Weekly, and since that time, photographs from the shoot that have gone around the globe. Whether gracing the cover of Vibe magazine’s memorial issue or illustrating Aaliyah’s Wikipedia page, the photographs have become so emblematic of that singer’s mystique that they have been remade countless times as murals, paintings, and drawings that are seen everywhere from Instagram to Times Square.
Recently. Johnson went through his negatives from the shoot, revealing a series of portraits the world has never seen. “She was on,” Johnson recalls. The consummate professional, Aaliyah arrived early at the shoot with her mother. Before Johnson’s camera, the triple-threat reveals endless facets of an artist coming into her own
These photos are simply stunning.
[via The YBF]
