my first camera

it was this pentax. well, its not exactly my first camera... i'd used instamatics, polaroids and movie cameras before... but the pentax was my first SLR.

it was a christmas present from my parents in 1972. my first pictures were of the family dog. then everything in the house was fair game. i took this photo of myself in the mirror.

then i went outside and started taking pictures of everything in my path. some local kids posed for me and i really like the way this image has aged. i don't think i knew those kids back then...and now, 35 years later, who knows who they became?



i'm really glad that i shot everything i looked at. i found this shot of traffic on wilshire blvd. in santa monica, circa 1978. not sure if this was taken with my pentax, or with my second camera, my preferred (the one i still use NOW) nikon fm.



i still take pictures of every interesting thing i see, even if it isn't human... i mean... doesn't every photographer?

backstage: who are these people?

john hiatt, a critic's favorite singer/songwriter is backed in a corner of his dressing room at the whisky a go go in 1980...it was an industry meet n greet... a function at the junction...DJ's, journalists, contest winners and what have you crowd the star of the evening to have their 15 minutes of a brush with greatness...maybe i'm cynical after so many years of doing this. but to me, hiatt seems tentative and on guard.

so may years of doing this... the people you photograph get used to you; they know who you are; they know you're a professional. there are backstage naifs though...they're either super fans and can't believe they are there meeting you, and end up telling you their whole life story and how you figure into it... or they want a little photo opportunity. that latter is easiest, if they pose and then go.

backstage is a weird place. it is at once your sanctuary before and after you do your show. you have your friends come up and see you there. then you have your duty...your record company, your manager...they come up; that's fine. then you have your job. meeting the public. that's the variable you can't control. that's the contradiction of the backstage space. its meant to be your sanctuary, yet, you have to open your door to strangers...because they are the ones who got you on that particular stage. one other shy guy, a critically acclaimed fellow said, "its hard to be a saint in the city." he knew what he was talking about.



Jack Nitzsche, friend, Hiatt

Jack Nitzsche - now that was a backstage visitor Hiatt wanted to see, and you can see by his demeanor that he's happy to see Jack. and Jack, so accustomed to the Hollywood backstage hustle, looks at the camera to give the final photo a focal point...as he knows John's not looking at the camera.

the late Jack Nitzsche was working with John Hiatt on a track for the soundtrack to William Friedkin's movie in production at that time, Cruising, starring Al Pacino as a cop working underground in the gay subculture looking for a serial killer striking that scene. the soundtrack to the movie was completely produced by Nitzsche and features many contemporary and at the time, heralded underground artists, like Willy de Ville and The Germs.

these backstage situations - where the labels host a meet n greet - these are the ones where you have to fire a flash. you need those flat, brightly lit photos for the trades. i got some of those from this function at the junction...but i couldn't bear to post them because they are flat and brightly lit.

instead.... i give you one of my favorite "backstage" photos that i've taken with a flash:

Fragile Light at Night........Nasvhille

There's a bar/restaurant in East Nashville called The Family Wash. It was made out of a former laundromat, hence the name. East Nashville is a cozy enclave of artists and musicians, and The Family Wash is one hang out friendly to them as well as to families.




Part of the coziness results from the nice and friendly people; another part comes from the wood and the magnicifent available ambient light that wafts in but never directly from the big windows at the front. And of course, candles during the night time hours.



Here is my friend Spock, tending bar - these photos were taken last year, in May 2006 when I was staying in Tennessee for a couple months. First, Spock went on vacation to Mexico, and I stayed at her wonderful house and sat with her lovely dog, Shelby Todd, and her cat, Spice. When she returned, I stayed and we planned her house-warming party to celebrate her first year in Nashville. We are both LA natives who moved to NYC and neither of us are in NYC now...



Here's Julia, basking in the glow of the candles and low ambient lights. She watching Warren Pash perform some songs on acoustic guitar. Warren is the man in the shadow below. Illuminated is Reeves Gabrels, the guitarist. He has a regular gig at the Family Wash on Sundays. Loud Sundays, that is!



I don't like using a flash - not even at night or in dark situations where everyone else wouldn't hesitate to flash. I like capturing what my eye sees. Of course, the human eye compensates for darkness...the iris opens wide to let in more light. And you can do that with your camera too. Its become such a preference for me, that I'm not sure I even like fully illuminated vistas. I certainly don't like bright television lighting of sets.

I'm an available light lover all the way.




The photos of Warren and Reeves were taken outside, late at night. They're illuminated only by the street lamps, moonlight, passing car headlights and the sole light above the entrance to the restuarant.



Again...this kind of situation really calls for the film and camera to push themselves to their performance limits. My Nikon FM - the same one I've been using since 1973 - has a fast lens - 1.8 is the widest apeture. I used Kodak Professional BWCN400 film stock for these shots. Normally, I do shoot Tri X or T Max, but this is the kind of film you could get processed anywhere, as it is a C-41 process. So, you can do it at any 1-hour photo place. Its great when you're traveling. And as you can see, it performs exceptionally well in low light situations.



Interiors are my preferred locations...and I'll look to any source for illumination.

pushing the film in hamtramck

PUSHING THE FILM



the sky and its fragile light

those cloudy skies were directly overhead in hamtramck, the old polish enclave of the detroit metro area. this is what the skies looked like on 666 - june 6, 2006. i came into town to see my friends, and since mike walker's new band, cuckold were playing with steve nawara's new band, a sort of rocket 455 reunion on this date 666...how could i not attend?

my friend, eugene strobe not only picked me up, but he put me up in his cute hamtramck house for the few days that would be in town.

eugene is a host with the most hospitality...he took me around on photo safaris, and i took some photos of him, and also of our friends, marty morris and dave shettler of the band, SSM when an "s" and the "m" came over to borrow a kick drum pedal. the other "s," john szymanski aka johnny hentch was not around that day. too bad! he's pretty photogenic.



i like to take pictures at twilight - at the moments before sunrise, and after the sun sets...the light is fragile and changes quickly. when you shoot at those times, you really push your film, your camera and your skills to their limits. i like to shoot with the iris wide open. it makes for a shallow depth of field, and allows me the focus on a narrow vista within the frame. everything else is soft while one specific part of the frame is sharp.

that's kind of the way i see. i have astigmatism in my right eye, and i don't know if that's why i see things that way, or if i just look at the world as if i'm shooting a movie. i understand that the painter known as El Greco suffered from astigmatism also and that's why his paintings look the way they do. it makes sense to me. el greco, though he painted in spain, and is considered a painter of the spanish school, was actually greek.


eugene on his porch after sunset


dave shettler with eugene’s kick drum pedal

the twilight is flattering to everyone – and although these guys are handsome, young and photogenic and would look good in any light…the twilight makes them seem younger, softer and even more photogenic.


Genie’s Wienies

i don’t think Genie’s Wienies is in business anymore… at least not by the same people who have been operating it since it opened. there were all kinds of real estate signs on the side of the building last year. now i wish we’d had a Genie’s Wienie. what did we have instead? probably pierogies

the story behind the photos: stiv n me in london, 1985

i know you are accustomed to seeing me photographing stiv, but here, he's photographing me. this photo was taken - of him photographing me photographing him - in amsterdam in july 1985.

1985 was the summer that stiv, michael monroe and i were roommates - in stiv's flat, in mine, and in michael's manager's flat ...


michael monroe in my flat at the portobello hotel

why did we have so many places to stay? well, we didn't stay in any of them for very long, for reasons i'll explain later.

stiv and i were in amsterdam for a week's vacation, so that when we returned to the UK, we could have an additional 6 months to stay without having to do deal with getting extended stay visas. we were both pretty savvy at getting around having to deal with government paperwork. i mean - can you imagine lords of the new church-era stiv in the US embassy?

although he looked out of place in a government office, stiv lived the life of a rock n roll celebrity; had a rather palatial (by london standards), expensive flat in ladbroke grove. arundel gardens. we could see lemmy's house from stiv's roof deck (see, i meant it when i called it palatial by london standards), and we were walking distance from the portobello hotel, where i always stayed in those days. whenever it was available, i got rooms 6 and 7, on the ground floor. the big room opened out into the hotel's beautiful english garden. the little room was big enough for the bed, a desk and the walkway between them to the bathroom, which was only big enough to turn around in. both the rooms were gorgeous though. the big room had a giant four-poster bed with a canopy and green velvet curtains that wrapped around the entire bed, so you could completely block all daylight out and sleep in.

even though i charged these posh portobello stays with credit cards that my parents paid, i was careful to stretch out my credit allotment. usually, we'd stay at the hotel for a week each month. that would basically take care of the time it took us to find another apartment - or holiday let.... we were on the move that summer because stiv and his girlfriend had split up and he couldn't really afford the palatial ladbroke grove digs on his own.

michael was in between flats, too. there was a month his manager went out of town, and we stayed there. after that, we stayed at the flat where i was house-sitting when little steven came to london...

stiv told me that little steven was a big dead boys fan. steven hung out with us, took us out to dinner, and we in turn told him where to get 24/7 eats (at the portobello hotel restaurant, but of course!) and where to get pizza by the slice that tasted almost like NY pizza (very tough one, that). steven was in town to work on his anti-apartheid project, a record called "sun city." he was going to be recording it at island, where i worked. small world, isn't it? stiv and michael ended up singing choruses on the record, along with half of london... they're also in the video hart perry shot, both in the studio part, and in the street scenes shot later in NYC.

in addition to his own "sun city," little steven went in to produce demos for stiv and michael.

we were in the recording studio in convent garden - neals yard studios, so named for neals yard, the little square in convent garden where the studio was located. peter cooke and dudley moore recorded their comedy albums there, and so did monty python! we loved that vibe. during the recording sessions, which went deep into the night, i'd go out before the shops closed to get some food for us - usually mediocre pizza and OK salads and sandwiches. then i'd crash on the couch in the front lounge, as the guys would just record all night long, often doing some takes over and over again. musicians would come and go all night long as well.

one morning, i woke up to find polaroids of me in full clown face make-up. everyone denies doing it - and because when i awoke, my face was clean, i wasn't exactly in the position to accuse anyone of really messing me with me.

during those recording sessions, stiv, michael and i had to move again.

stiv's former drummer in the wanderers, ricky "rock" goldstein had a flat in the ravenscourt park section of hammersmith, and i had stayed with him and his wife, margaret before. they were going on a brief holiday, so stiv, michael and i decamped there.



stiv in the bedroom of the ravenscourt park flat

believe it or not, we lived a sort of happy nuclear family type existence... with me the mom and stiv and michael as my sons. only they both always spent way more time primping in the bathroom than i ever did. we moved by taxi. stiv had a genius way of packing, and always only carried one suitcase. but that one suitcase carried everything AND the kitchen sink. stiv packed for us, and left michael and i to hail a taxi that would take us from old church street in south kensington to ravenscourt park. an older gentleman cabbie picked us up, and was flirting with michael, thinking he was a woman. i did all the talking, saying that my friend was from finland (true) and didn't speak english (false). it would be terrible for the cabbie to all of a sudden stop carrying our luggage if he learned michael was a man! stiv got in, and the cabbie is exchanging real dude eye contact with him: lucky guy... two ladies! ha!




michael in his red kimono in the bedroom, ravenscourt park