CNN
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Photographer Derek Ridgers’ introduction to the Cannes Film Festival arrived in 1984, when he was commissioned to shoot the DJ and rapper Afrika Bambaataa — in town to promote his cameo in Stan Lathan’s “Beat Street” — for the music magazine, NME. “I don’t think I’d ever really thought about Cannes, or the film festival, before I went,” Ridgers, widely celebrated for his distinctive portraits of British subcultures, told CNN via email. “Every year one sees items about it on TV, but it hadn’t impacted my life in any significant way.”
Ridgers would return to the French resort town a further 11 times, during which he said he “only ever saw two films” —…
