Category: photo

It’s really nice when some of the old cohort send a text out of the blue: “we’re playing in Pittsburgh tonight and you’re on the guest list”.  This is the second time the Messthetics have played here, both times at Spirit in Lawrenceville.

Amazing musicians, amazing show.  Thanks guys, it’s always so good to see you.

Here’s a good article on the Messthetics, here’s some music and you can order the cd or get more info here.

The Hirshhorn talk was an interesting experience, although we might not have answered everyone’s questions satisfactorily. Punk is endlessly variable, depending on context, which is one of its strengths as a subculture. That can make it hard to talk about, though; everyone has their own entry point and personal associations. And so many things have changed — how do you explain how deeply uncool it was in the early 80s for a punk to be seen posing for photos, now that people are happily, constantly posing? Or, now that it’s cheap and easy now to take any image you want, how expensive and time-consuming it could be to take and develop pictures from film?

Ultimately, I had more questions for the audience than they had for us. I wanted to talk more with the people who had us sign books, to ask what they were working on. I wanted to ask the person standing up in the back of the auditorium, carefully framing my slideshow on their smartphone, what are you going to do with those photos, many of which have never been published before? It’s a question I’m asking myself, too.

Audio of Banned in DC Hirshhorn talk

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!