Soundgarden: The Vogue, Seattle, on a Sub Pop Sunday, 1987

Bruce Pavitt and I wanted to feature a live photo on the cover of Soundgarden’s debut EP, Screaming Life. The band was kind of hesitant about featuring a shirtless Chris on the cover, having come from the somewhat prudish indie rock and metal scene. Sub Pop was doing Sunday nights at the Vogue that spring so we set up a night to shoot Soundgarden.

The photos were nothing less than phenomenal and we knew we had made the right decision. It was beautiful, masculine with a femine grace, close in and intimate feeling. I often hold my camera out or away and don’t look through the viewfinder. So it looks as if I’m hovering over the band, or they’re playing up to me, for a more dynamic angle.

(Image used for the Screaming Life EP cover)

Band

Classics. A piece of work judged over time to be definitive. And what is it but a “Charles Peterson photo” that comes to mind when you think of the grunge scene, or maybe even the nineties altogether? These are my legacy photos, the icons, the perfect outcome of the vision I was trying to bring to the world, no matter how small the subject seemed to begin with. I was an art student, so I leaned into it with that critical eye, no matter how sloppy it all seemed at the time. I always aimed high, with technique, creation, and concept.

Eddie Vedder once said to me, upon looking at an image I took of him, where his head occupies only a small corner in a sea of black, “Oh, wow, I never thought of it like that…” Exactly! The best art is a blending of mystery and beauty, constantly drawing you back in. Lighting is the emotion, composition the primal, and moment the intellectual. My hope is that I’ve succeeded on all three levels with these photos I’m presenting to you. - Charles Peterson

Kategorie „Photography“