These photos were taken in October 1986 outside Food for Thought on Connecticut Ave in DC. It was a daytime show — Rites of Spring– but those shots didn’t come out well and I didn’t print anything from this roll. These are scanned from the contact sheets, hence the slightly degraded images. They’re beautiful, though. Elegiac, which was the feeling in the air at the time, or so it seemed to me.
Dave and Bert
Lynch and Ed
Jeff
Cynthia
I have four notebooks of negatives from this time, but less-good shots of bands make up a large percentage. I didn’t take nearly as many pictures or make as many prints as I’d have liked. Film is a great medium, but costs mounted up quickly — film, photo paper, darkroom time ($5 an hour at Glen Echo Park, where I usually went).
When these photos were taken, Cynthia and I had recently started work on Banned in DC. On Thursday December 13 the Hirshhorn Museum in DC will have a program marking the 30th anniversary of the publication of the book, and I’ll be part of that. The Hirshhorn is one of the museums I always visit when I go back and it’ll be amazing to be there in relation to this project.
UPDATE: the Hirshhorn says this event is full — no more tickets available!