Ithaka Darin Pappas

Ithaka Darin Pappas (born July 8, 1966), known professionally as Ithaka, is an American-born multidisciplinary artist of Greek ancestry who creates using music, writing, sculpture and photography (both as separate entities or using them in combination with each other).

He has authored a collection of short stories, entitled Ravenshark Chronicles published in international magazines and periodicals, which have sometimes been the basis for his travel-oriented lyrical content.

Ithaka's first professional photograph was published in 1984, in Thrasher skateboarding magazine.

Much of his early portraiture work was of aspiring Hollywood actors, but he then began getting more involved in music industry photography, working with Los Angeles area hip hop artists such as; A Lighter Shade of Brown, Big Lady K, Low Profile, Eazy E and N.W.A.

The ongoing sculpture series entitled The Reincarnation Of A Surfboard which Ithaka began in 1989 (which includes over 300 individual contemporary artworks created from recycled surfboards) has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, the United States and also in Brazil, at São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound.

Although a citizen of the United States who vocalizes in English, because Ithaka was living and recording in Portugal for several years during the mid-late 1990s, at the very beginning of the hip hop movement in the country, he is often included in the genre of music known as Hip hop tuga and sometimes considered one of the founding artists along with: Black Company, Boss AC, Zona Dread, Family, Funky D, New Tribe, Lideres da Nova Mensagem, Da Weasel, Mind Da Gap, and General D.

Público also cited his debut release Flowers And The Color Of Paint as one of the country's Ten Most Influential Albums Of The 1990s, while a 2020 article in Rua Magazine proclaimed that Flowers And The Color Of Paint was one of the twenty albums that changed the Portuguese music industry.

During the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, writings from Ithaka's collection of ocean-related short story series entitled, ‘’Ravenshark Chronicles’’ (including titles such as "Zé dos Cães") were published in the surfing magazines; Surfer, The Surfer's Journal, Wavelength (UK), Transworld Surf and Water Magazine.

His 1992 spoken-word song So Get Up, under varying titles, has charted on four separate occasions in Europe and the UK and has been remixed by artists such as Fatboy Slim and Cosmic Gate.

During his most active recording years in Portugal (1994–1997), the artist's musical projects were nominated for a total of nine Pemios Blitz (the Portuguese Grammy Awards) including; Best Album (for Flowers and the Color of Paint in 1995 and Stellafly in 1997) and Best Male Vocalist (in 1995 and 1997).

In addition, the national newspaper, Público, awarded his 1997 release Stellafly as "Album Of The Year" and considered a song from the record Seabra Is Mad (musically co-written by Ewan Butler and Joe Fossard) as both the "Song Of The Year" and "Video Of The Year".

Escape From The City Of Angels, an alternative hip hop song Ithaka recorded with guest vocalist Marta Dias for his album Flowers and the Color of Paint was featured in the soundtrack of Antoine Fuqua's 1998 feature film Replacement Killers (Columbia Pictures) in a scene featuring Academy Award nominees/winners Mira Sorvino, Chow Yun-fat and Clifton Collins Jr..

In a 2005 article for the magazine Waves, journalist Ricardo Macario described Ithaka as "The Miscellaneous Man".

As he told Dance Club Magazine in a 2005 interview, I live it, write it, rap about it.

He has since resided and worked in a variety of locations including; Greece, Japan, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico.

In a 2008 review of Ithaka's sixth album Saltwater Nomad, the online surf-culture platform Surfline stated that "the artist effortlessly traverses at ease between all of his choses mediums of expression [music, sculpture, writing and photography]", and that "his life's journey is a soulful balancing act somewhere between the worlds of euphoric creation and aquatic diversion."

Ithaka was born and raised in coastal Southern California, and began experimenting with his father's 35mm and 120mm cameras at the age of five.

He began surfing at the age of twelve, after vacationing with a friend's family on the Hawaiian island of Maui and observing the locals riding six-foot tubes at Honolua Bay.

“That's the life for me”, he thought to himself.

Upon returning to California, he sold his drum kit to buy a surfboard.

The ocean, until present day, has been a major influence for the artist.

As a young adult he began traveling the world in search of waves and adventure, largely inspiring his photography, three-dimensional artworks and voyage-oriented lyrics and stories.

In 2009, one of the stories, “Miracle At Malibu”, was published in the collective hardbound book, Surf Story.

In recent years these stories have also been published individually as mini-novels.

In an interview given to Surf Portugal magazine in 2012 while attending one of Ithaka's exhibitions in Europe, graphic artist Dave Carson described Ithaka's work as experimental, unexpected and surprising and in a 2013 report about his work, Fuel TV considered him one of the world's premier contemporary surf artists.

As an audio artist, Ithaka has recorded seven albums of alternative hip hop and spoken-word music.

After the release of F. Gary Gray's 2015 biographical drama about gangsta rap pioneers Eazy E and N.W.A., entitled Straight Outta Compton, there was renewed visibility in some of the early pictures that Ithaka Darin Pappas had made of the artists (all created while freelancing for Priority Records between 1988 and 1990).

In 2016, many of his photographs, including the cover of their 1989 Straight Outta Compton remix single release, were projected as a backdrop at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York during the induction ceremony officially admitting N.W.A into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2017, more photographs appeared in the HBO documentary, The Defiant Ones directed by Allen Hughes.

Other photographs of N.W.A. by Ithaka were shown in the 2018 museum exhibition "Hip-Hop : Un Age d'Or" (or The Golden Age Of Hip Hop) at the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Marseille, France.

Later in 2018, photographs of Eazy E riding a skateboard in Venice Beach, California that Ithaka had taken in 1989 were published in the photography book Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop (written by Vikki Tobak).

The book, published by Penguin Random House, was included on Time Magazine's 25 Best Photobooks of 2018 list.

Ithaka's images from the book have also been present in its subsequent traveling photography exhibition series that to date has shown at The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles (2019), International Center of Photography in New York (2020) and at Manarat Al Saadiyat Museum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2021).

Other early photographs of Eazy E and N.W.A. by Ithaka have been manufactured into apparel by companies such as Neighborhood (Japan), Bravado, MadeWorn, Merch Traffic and others.