Ed Colver
Is there a more iconic punk photographer?
In my head, Ed is someone who shouldn’t really need an introduction - I mean when it comes to punk photographers, he is the standard the rest of us are just struggling to meet. As a kid growing up and getting into punk in the late 80s, viewing his images of early Los Angeles hardcore scene, which dominated almost every record I owned, helped cement in my brain that this is a world I wanted to immerse myself within. You can practically smell the sweat, feel the heat and pressure of the crowd and just sense the primal fury in his brilliant images of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Gun Club, Adolescents, Germs and so many more. I can’t thank him enough for both the inspiration and for taking the time to chat with me… what follows is the distillation of a three hour conversation from back in 2021. You can check out what he’s up to these days via edwardcolver.com or via his instagram. Portrait of Ed by the ever brilliant and gracious Casey McAllister.
I read that you started going to shows in the '60s and looking into a lot of heavy rock and psych stuff. What kind of stuff were you into like- Blue Cheer?
I saw Blue Cheer when Vincebus Eruptum came out. I saw The Mothers when Freak Out was released. I saw Captain Beefheart when Trout Mask [Replica] was released. I saw the Iron Butterfly three times before they cut their first album. I was going at it. I saw Cream on their first Cream tour in '67 at the Whisky. And I only listen to YouTube now. My ghetto blaster, that's what I call it, I've got Bluetooth, but there's so much stuff on there that, it's all here already.
I feel like a lot of early punk era people were just dismissive of that stuff, or it always felt like people rejected that. Do you think that's actually true?
Well, the punks were always like ‘kill the hippies,’ like the Deadbeats song, and it's like, hey folks, that's not hippies. Those are long-haired rednecks. Those were the people that had long hair in the '70s. The hippies, the real hippies, that were cool and interesting, and started ecological and ‘be good’ movements and all that, and the hybrids, and psychedelic art and stuff, those were the hippies. And then they were gone. I had hair down past the middle of my back and cut it off in '72, I didn't give a shit anymore.
What was your transition... 'Cause one of the things I read about was one of the first things you went to that kind of hippy psych rock. Like being into the Motels, I read things at Madame Wong's...
That's the first band I photographed. I started doing photography in late '78. By the end of '79 I was basically kinda supporting myself already. I never ran an ad, I never ever asked anybody for work. I never had a published phone number, and I used funeral sympathy cards with my address on 'em. And I've worked on over 500 album covers. I'm really proud of that. It's like, if you do good work, people will find you. You don't have to kiss ass to get a job. I never played any art world games at all, I never sent out slides to museums or anything, so I'm kind of almost an outsider artist... That's way overused nowadays in my opinion.
Yeah, but I think that that is... One thing that's always been appealing to me about photos, there's obviously the aspect of it being bands and music I’m into...
Mm-hmm.
But it’s more that unique perspective. Because you are part of this thing, not an outside observer...
Oh yeah, I was next to those people. I was two, three feet away from 'em on stage a lot of times, even. Like, I've got a picture of HRM about two and a half feet away from him on stage. It's like, that doesn't happen anymore. There's always backstage passes and photo passes and a three song limit. I think I had to do that just once or twice for some stupid job, and I was like, this is the most lame thing I've ever seen. And it's like, is it the management company that doesn't wanna have their artists sweating or have their hair out of place? And then they gotta run them off? And it's like, God forbid any sweat in rock ’n’ roll.
It's a weird control thing. For me, the stuff I'm really interested in shooting is the smaller stuff. I know that you started seeing Black Flag when they were playing the Starwood, and then Black Flag is playing to 3,000 people at the Olympic auditorium...
Yeah, it was like, holy shit. I photographed all kinds of punk bands, everybody I could get together and I'd always keep joking about it, it's like, I've even got pictures of the Rim Pest. I never knew anything about 'em hardly, I just photographed 'em a long time ago.
Recently, I didn't get any pictures used in the Mad Marc Rude documentary, the one on the Mentors. I met a lady that said, like, "Oh, I did a documentary on the Mentors," and I said, "When you see what I have, you'll re-edit your film."
I was talking with Murray Bowles and he was telling me that he had rolls of film from the '80s he hadn't developed yet...
Oh, wow.
Because he was shooting much, was that kind of how your process was at the time, or in general? Or were you shooting and processing constantly? 'Cause you were talking about...
Oh, I lived in the fucking dark room. I made a stack of prints that could go to the moon, I swear to God. One time, TSOL needed press photos when they were going out on tour, and I printed a whole box of 100 prints of TSOL that I'd taken. They were drying all over my room and stuff, and I was like, fuck. Yeah. I hate doing dark room work now. I'm like, over it.
I mean you have an impressive catalog of work that’s been published, but how much...
Oh, people have seen about 5% of my work.
Wow.
I'm not kidding. People say, "You did all that punk stuff", and it's like, you ain't seen shit.
Is it just because you're not happy with the images, as far as the quality? Or is it because...
No, I haven't ever scanned them. I haven't done anything with 'em. I have a file drawer and a handful of alphabetized negatives, and all these different weird bands that I photographed. In '79, all I was going to was punk shows and stuff, and I saw pretty much every big. My early stuff, it was pretty shitty for the first year or so, but I started learning real quick from my mistakes.
Oh, I know what I was gonna mention, we were talking about hippies and stuff. And I kind of likened being part of the punk scene to being part of the beat movement, or the real, the early hippy movement, anti-war, and all that stuff. And it was kind of like, it was this underground movement and I was part of that, and it's pretty amazing. Nobody was there when I was shooting a lot of these pictures, and now it's freaking history. It just blows my mind.
And no offense to anybody I'm talking to at the moment, but it's like, everybody and their dog wants to take punk photos nowadays, not just concert photos. "I wanna take punk photos." It amazes me. There's the video, “Black Flag Reunion 1983” that's on YouTube, and it was that show that we were talking about, there's 3,000 people there, and I was the only person between the barricade and the stage. And out of that whole crowd, I'm the only person visible taking pictures. What a concept. You know? Now you're elbowing everybody and can't see through all the phones taking shitty pictures, so, how many times have you gotten a good picture on your phone? It doesn't work.
Not unless it's a picture of my dog or something, which is hanging out in the yard, and then I'm like, oh that's a cute picture... [chuckle]
I take pictures of my dogs all the time, but my forward camera doesn't work forward. You gotta flip it around and try and look in it, and try and frame something just to document it so I can send it to somebody or something, it's like, this is bullshit. Yeah.
But back to what you're talking about too, I constantly shoot shows myself, not in the last year, but...
So you're taking that big break, huh? [laughter]
Well, you know, COVID...
You're doing some good work. You're doing some really good stuff. I know what I was gonna talk about. Very early on when I was shooting, I became aware Unheard Music was gonna use some of my stills and they were using all full frame, 35 millimeter horizontal pictures and stuff. And I studied art, all applied art all through grade school, high school and junior college. All I cared about was art. Every form, like woodworking, and painting, and ceramics, and printmaking, and sculpture, and design, and that's what I did. I had a concept of composition, and I paid attention to light like a hawk, and I paid attention to timing. Like, da-da-da-da-da, here comes the drama, boom. I stood behind somebody one time, I could look right over their head, I'm 6'4". It was pretty funny, I was standing behind him, and they were holding this camera up for like two minutes straight, and then snap, and they took something, and then I knew what they took wasn't anything that was any better than what had been going on, it's just like, what you just took one, why? What inspired you to click it right then? [laughs]
I'd read somewhere that you used to basically watch shows straight through the viewfinder?
Oh. Yeah. It was like looking through a keyhole, my peripheral was gone almost constantly. I'd pull away and look around or you know, when I would advance the film by hand. I never had a telephoto, a motor drive, any of that shit. I saw these guys come in, where they have these flashes, and these power packs, and the newspapers...
Yeah. And they machine gun it [laughs]
Yeah. And it's like, wow-wee. I'd have to wait eight to ten seconds for my flash to recycle. And I'd miss stuff in the interim, and a lot of times I'd turn it off and go, ‘available light looks rocking right now,’ click. Open it up, shoot, and then turn it back on and hope I didn't miss something. I did that all the time. No telephoto lens, or autofocus. None of that.
You're focusing everything manually?
Oh yeah, and it was real zen-like to me, it was like, I used my camera so much that I could focus it without looking, just by the feel. You know what I mean? Hey, that way you could do flip shots totally crisp and focused, or we did a new drum scan of it, it's so fucking detailed. It's amazing. It's like, he ran diagonal across the stage, it's in perfect focus. It's actually better than I ever even thought, because, like, this new drum scan, it's amazing. And it looks so much better. I always bring up that image high contrast because I liked him going into the void, and I made it kind of graphic because of that. With this new scan, you see all the wrinkles in his T-shirt, you see the Levi’s hang tag. You can see people back to the wall, you can see the decor on the wall, you can see an empty balcony. It's all dark gray tones, but it's all in there, and now it looks like a beautiful fucking photograph. It's kinda strange because I always printed in contrast and all of a sudden my most well-known image, it looks like ten times better than it ever did. It's nuts.
So, you always shot with a 50mm lens, right? Was there a reason for that?
That's what my camera had. I never went out. I was not a gear nut, at all. It was like, this is working. This works fine. I don't like wide-angle lenses, like fish-eye stuff, it's just like, ‘Yeah, everything's in focus, but his nose is huge.’ You know what I mean? That type of thing is just like... they use it all the time on skateboarding, and it's like, yeah, it's in focus. You can't aim it properly and shoot it in focus, even with the autofocus, you ought to be able to do that nowadays. I don't like the way they diminish stuff. Wide angle looks okay if used properly. I did architectural photographs from 1984 to, about... I don't know, 2008 or 2009 when I quit, and I was doing four-by-five stuff and everything and you know, parallax, people don't even understand that. It's like how things will distort if you have a wide angle lens and stuff. You know, it depends on how you use them, how it looks.
I use a 20mm when I'm shooting a lot of stuff where I'm in really small spaces, so I'm like right on top of people. I used to use a 50mm but I felt like I just got too close to people, but I shoot 50 in bigger spaces. But if I'm shooting in basements or house shows…
I shot Social Distortion at a house party [laughs]
Tell me about that.
I think it was in Fort Worth, I don't even remember. I've just got the pictures to prove it [laughs]
I know you did the back of Mommy's Little Monster...
And I did the one on the back of the 1945 single too…
I recently interviewed Alison Braun, And she was telling me, ‘Ed Colver told me I need to watermark everything.’ Do you feel like a lot of your images just get appropriated, and how much of that goes on?
It's like my stuff had gone around the world without my knowledge. I was just flabbergasted. I was seeing it constantly, and it never had my name on it, and it's fucking ridiculous. Oh, and then the Wasted Youth flip shot that was used so much, it's actually a crooked photograph of a print with my pencil signature on it, if you look close on a lot of those that aren't cropped. And it's like, ‘Ooh, I'd like to know who uploaded that fucking crooked photo.’ Somebody bought a print from me and did a bad picture of it, and that's the one that was all over the place, and it's like, fuck heads!
How do you deal with that?
Well, people are like, ‘Are you pissed off about the damage being this and that, and this and stuff?’ And it's like, you know what? It just iconizes my images that much more, and eventually a lot of people will learn that I created 'em. It's like, look how many times the Damaged cover's been parodied. Fuck, man, I got at least 30. And the Wasted Youth flip shot, I've got it on flyers and all kinds of stuff.
I guess it is the downfall of the digital age where everyone assumes all content is free. And it devalues it in a lot of ways, right?
Yeah. I go on hashtag search every once in a while and ask for credit. Some of my most ripped off stage pictures that are just fucking everywhere are my pictures of Christian Death and Rozz Williams. I go on a search and ask for credit. And I went on this one guy's page, he had a picture of mine of Rozz up. And it's like, he loves Rozz. He likes this iconic photo. And I ask him. I said, "Please post my photography credit with my portrait of Rozz Williams. Thank you."
That's the way I ask people. I always say thank you. And this guy came back, "These are on the internet for anybody to use." And it's like, "You motherfucking piece of shit. You love this guy, and you love this iconic photo that I created. And I was friends with him. They used to call me the sixth member in Christian Death, even." And he just blows me off. And it's like, "You wouldn't have that picture if it wasn't for me, asshole." You know? Fucking jerk. He's probably beating off to it.
Does it bother you in different ways, like how it's being used? Like if some kid is making a flyer for their show versus some company...
I'm wise enough to understand that there's a degree of severity on that. It's like, yeah, flyers or something, is one thing.
You and Raymond Pettibon, for example, both had... You've had careers in art, to some extent, right? But...
Yeah. And he's rich and I'm not [laughs]
There's a lot of other people in those early punk years whose work never got acknowledged. Especially from photographers, artists, etc. Most of the bands didn't make any money, but there are the occasional ones that made a little bit...
Yeah, yeah. Between Pettibon and I, we did a huge majority of the iconography on the LA scene, the two of us. It's different. I'm not comparing it, but we created a lot of the imagery and iconography out of that scene.
In kind of that same context, how important was it to shoot the crowd and the people at the shows? To get that kind of atmosphere.
I didn't do that quite as much. I did it some, but I wouldn't just go, "Oh, look. There's a mohawk," and shooting that. Personally, I think that whole fucking studded jackets and mohawks was a fucking poser bunch of shit. That's the English look. It's just bizarre. I just hate that. To me, I don't know, LA was like Levi's and a T-shirt, and a flannel and boots. And it's like, message T-shirts and stuff. I can understand people wearing them and stuff, but they didn't use to look like that [laughs]
I've joked with kids that are younger than me about that, "When I was in my 20s, all the punk rockers I knew, basically, just looked homeless." Like T-shirt and worn out clothes, worn out jeans. You know what I mean? And Vans, Converse, maybe. Occasionally, people would have boots. That was about it.
Boots are safer.
What sort of stuff do you look for when you're composing your images? Like either...
What's falling in the background. How the person's fitting into the frame. The background is super important. I show people like, ‘look. If what's right there was not in the frame, if you crop that out, or darken it so it disappears, the picture's way better because it keeps you focused on what you want them to see. The image.’ It's like having a portrait with a cigarette butt laying on the floor kind of. It's like, ‘What's that? What's that? What's that?’ It draws your eye, and it's just like that's bad. I was trying to compose stuff that was as clean as possible in the background.
What's your worst injury from shooting that kind of stuff? Or the worst situation?
When I was shooting that Olympic Auditorium show the crowd broke the barricade, and it slammed me into the stage. And I should have just gone under the stage, but I'm thinking, ‘I gotta get out of here.’ But my feet wouldn't get anything. I threw my camera on the stage. And there's a video of it, actually, which is really weird. The only video I've ever seen from that night, and they're playing “Depression.” I'm about four feet away from Henry, but I'm turning to the side and shooting Chuck and Dez and stuff. I used to love that. People'd be right up his nose four feet away from him.
Yeah. That's so crazy. Going back to consciously composing your shots - how much was based on like, just knowing the songs, and you've seen the band enough times, you know how people are gonna react?
Oh, some of them yeah, yeah. I used to just watch like a hawk and have the shutter button halfway down, it was like, ‘Oh, there's something.’ I'd accidentally take pictures sometimes because I had seriously had the button pushed halfway down.
Are you one of those people who kinda hangs on to everything?
No, but I have a lot of stuff like… I got postcards that Joey sent me, Deloitte sent me from Europe, a letter from Jello and different weird stuff like that. I always kept that kinda stuff. But no, I collected, well, since I was about 17 or 18, I collected American arts and crafts, period.
I consider that I have a good sense of aesthetics, and I don't quite know where I inherited that, it's probably from my life-long paying attention to art. And it's like I bought all this stuff. I was collecting that Arts and Crafts stuff for six years before there was any documentation whatsoever on it.
Oh, I was gonna mention about my punk flyers. I used to take my pocket knife out and take staples out. I would tear them down off the phone poles, and when I'd go to shows, there'd be a stack of them, I'd grab some of them, and roll them up and put them in the bushes, or take them straight back to my car. I never folded them up and put them in my pocket. I took care of them all the time, because I collected the hippie posters, that's Avalon and the Filmores, and Rick Griffin and stuff when I was a kid. And I treasured those, but these were absolutely different, but they were still really important and it's like, I'd pull into Chinatown, there'd be all these great black and white 11 X 14 Fear posters, Fear at the Hong Kong and stuff, and it's like, I'd take all the staples out and stuff. They'd probably be pissed if they knew it. Take them down, probably right after they put them up but… [laughs] then I put them in flat files. I had like a crazy ass fucking collection of them.
Punk flyers in flat files is a kind of a funny concept. But now it's proven true. Totally, I mean Black Flag, a xerox flyers of Black Flag is worth hundreds, and it's like "God damn, I sold them too soon."
So, we kinda talked about musical trajectory a little bit, and… being into the psych stuff, being into early '78, '79 punk, early LA punk... Which I assume is like Madame Wong's and...
No, I went into Madame Wong's just a couple of times, and it was like, "No, this is fucking new wave shit. I'm outta here."
And it always cracks me up. They say, punk and new wave, and it's like, those fucking things might've happened at the same time, they've got nothing to do with each other. It just drives me crazy. Fuck new wave. I don't like that stuff and I never have. And it's like, it's just modern pop. People call the Talking Heads punk, and Blondie punk, and it's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That's my opinion.
Everything about it. I don't know. It was two different things. I was into punk, and that was at the birth of hardcore. I guess my buddy, Steve Blush, we wrote American Hardcore and gave Southern California credit for the hardcore scene. That was punk rock. And I never, ever listened to any English punk music at all. None of it.
Really?
Nope, never listened to any of it. I've worked with 999 and did a cover for them, Live in LA '91. But it's like, I never listened to any British punk band, ever. None of it. I didn't buy any of the records, nothing. It was all shit, to use a crass term, and I'm not even talking about that band [laughs]
But not even stuff like The Damned or Discharge or things like that?
No, not at all. I've never bought one English punk rock record, ever.
So just all American?
And mostly LA. I like Minor Threat, the Bad Brains, and Cro-Mags, and stuff like that. Flipper, DLA, and The Kennedys, that kind of stuff. By the end of 1983, I'd worked on 80 LA punk rock records.
Yeah, which is crazy.
Yeah, it is. There was a month there was supposed to be 12 records that came out in a month that I had worked on. I was just like, "What the fuck?" And it didn't quite happen because of scheduling and stuff. There was a single that came out of Toxic Shock called Noise from Nowhere. Pushead did the cover, and then big letters on the back of it. It said, "Surprise, no photos by Ed Colver." And then one of the bands that were on their Peace Corpse, they did a song where the chorus, you jump off stage, you might get your picture taken by Ed Colver. I didn't know about that for years, and I even knew the band. I photographed them. I photographed The Plague... I don't know, Skinhead Army. I don't know, all kinds of different bands, Red Brigade, Stepmothers.
Wow, good Lord. The thing is, when you start rattling off like these are the bands, 'cause there's a lot of these bands that I've heard the songs of, or I've seen the names listed on comps, that kind of stuff. But well, you actually have faces to put with those sounds. It's crazy to me. What were you into between that kind of late 60s stuff and then whatever happened in the late 70s?
Not much. Stooges, Patti Smith, not too much. I didn't go out much at all during the ’70s. I was out a lot up to like between '66 and probably '72, '73 then I got married. Getting divorced was the best thing ever happened, with my first marriage I never would have become a photographer or done anything with my art. I was working in factories. And I was making bank. Mid '70s I was making $11.62 an hour, that was three and four times my high school friends, what they were making.
I've read interviews with Tim Yohannan who did MRR, where he talked about all that stuff that came out in '70, '71, '72… it was just kinda waiting around for punk to happen. Because the music went to shit, and then you were waiting for something that revitalized it and had that same kind of energy, like this amped-up rock ’n’ roll.
Like The Stooges. People talk about who started punk rock. Iggy did, hands down, end of argument, folks. Fuck you. It's like yeah, they talk, ‘Oh, the Sex Pistols and The Clash and that shit.’ And it's like, ‘Uh-uh uh-uh uh-uh.’ Iggy did it way before you, and better. Have you ever heard of The Punks from Detroit in 1973?
Yep!
And “Drop Dead,” that's a fucking Godhead song.
Yeah. I think about that. It's kind of interesting 'cause I feel like there's a lot of that stuff... Iggy is the big one. Sonic Rendezvous Band, the post Stooges band. Like all that stuff that's coming out of Cleveland, like the Rocket from the Tombs, the pre-Dead Boys band…
That is so great.
What prompted you to start taking photographs in the late '70s and not in those earlier stages? Was it just, you didn't have a camera?
Yeah. I was just doing artwork and things like that, and working in factories, and married. Then I got divorced and got a hold of a camera and started taking it to shows. I would shoot punk shows and then I would drive around on Skid Row and shoot pictures of bums. Now they're called homeless. But back then, they were mostly a bunch of alcoholic winos passed out in the street. It's a whole thing.
It's like I was so omnipresent in the punk scene, if anybody started going to punk shows, they'd see me there. That saved me a lot of grief. People might have hassled me, or not known who I was or something. But if they went to a show, I was already there, every time they went to a show. So even if they didn't know me, they knew I was part of it.
I think that's a really big thing. You can tell that with your images. You're actually part of the thing you're documenting. It's not like you're an outside observer...
I take that as a high compliment.
And the other thing about your photography that's always impressed me is, again... Because you're shooting with that 50 millimeter lens, it puts the viewer in that moment, more so than anything else.
It does, it makes it feel like you were there., I never thought about it until after that, and it's like, ‘Oh, yeah, it's because of the 50, because it's human perspective.’
There's photos that you're known for. Like the Wasted Youth photo, the Damaged photo, the Bad Religion boots photo, some of those Christian Death photos. But are there images that you are like, "Well, actually, these are the things that, to me, really convey what my work is about?" Do you have those photos that like, "These are the photos that actually mean more to me, or actually convey what I'm going for"?
That photo wasn't Bad Religion. Do you know that?
I know it's an Oki Dog picture, but I always assumed that was Bad Religion's boots.
No.
I think I made that assumption because they used that for that record.
And every photo in that package was one of mine, and there's no credit.
Wait, Really?
They used a 16 by 20 print of the boots to scan. I never got that back. They paid me 500 bucks. I needed the money at the time. I was like, ‘Oh, cool, this is fine.’ And I thought, like, ‘Oh, you know, that's great, that's a good picture, they're gonna use it, that'll be cool.’ They branded my photo and didn't give me credit. And in my opinion, it's just about the worst deal I've ever been involved in.
I mean, it’s an amazing photo...
The lighting is nuts. I balanced the camera. I put my wrists on my knees and was sitting on a picnic bench at Oki Dog's after a Starwood show. And I braced my wrist on my knees and did these time exposures. And that's available fluorescent light. And the lighting is... you couldn't light it nicer, right? They're long exposures, bracing my hands on my knees. I did a whole roll of photos. There's only been one other one published, and it was the three boots in a row. Like, in my boots and chains photo, on the left it's Reid Campbell, who was in a group called Modern Industry from the San Diego Valley, and then Linda Kurd in the middle, and then Monty Harrison on the right. I'm still in touch with...
How do you remember that? [laughs]
I knew those guys.
I know, but I have photos that I'm like... that was people I lived with, and I was like, "What is this guy's name again?" [laughs] Yeah, it's amazing what you can do with light though, right? It's...
Yeah. It's what it's all about, composition and light. And playing with light. Playing with light is really fun. Oh, and just to impart a little bit of knowledge, when... I used to take color photos and use color photos, and they were just color photos kind of use. When I learned how to add light in, or I mean color into it, that's when I became good at doing color, not just shooting color photographs.
So like if you're using a blue background, you light it with a strobe light and you have pale blue. You light that background with a blue gel on your light, you lose a lot of power, because it doesn't transfer the light as fast, but then all of a sudden, you have electric fucking blue background. I did a picture of The Cramps with a red light on the whole band and then an electric blue background in the "Flamejob" album.
And I did the portrait of the band on the back of the "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" I've got in the middle of my junk yard of art studio, I have The Cramps at that particular time, they had a lot of different line-up changes, but at that time that my studio was a junkyard of sculptures and stuff, and I have the band standing behind them and Lux is wearing a black latex bodysuit, and he's got this antique jug I have, like a moonshine jug, and it actually, when I found it, it's old. It's got 3 Xs across it and he's kind of crouching. I think he might have had high heels and he's crouching and proffering that forward like, "Here it is."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.
Those guys were amazing. I'm glad I got to work with them.
I was going to ask you, so you shot a lot of stuff available light. And there's a lot of... Were you shooting like 400 speed film or were you shooting like 1200?
Oh, I always shot Tri-X 400.
Okay. And then you would push it?
And I would over-process it. And when I printed it I'd get the contrast usually. I'd over-expose it sometimes.
And you're shooting super-slow shutter speeds, right?
Not generally. I used to do one second exposures. I'd brace myself against a phone pole and hold sphinx-still and do one second exposures and things like that. I would brace my wrist down on my knees when I shot the boot, but live stuff I wouldn't usually do over... Under a 60th.
What are you doing for art now? Are you still doing art? Are you still creating stuff?
Mainly I'm just working on trying to get my next book together. And I hired a guy that's scanning my stuff, and we're editing it. We're literally going through every file drawer and a half full of punk rock negatives, almost two file drawers full. We're going through and literally scanning anything that's worth a damn. It's awesome, it's so exciting. I'm finding so much stuff.
And are you doing the book yourself? Are you getting it published, or is there...
Well, I've got my fingers crossed that Tashon might happen. That would be great, because it would get worldwide distribution. Copies of my books are selling for hundreds of dollars now. Did you know that?
Yeah. 'Cause I lost your book. [laughs]
You what?
I've moved around a lot in my life, and I lost your book. [laughs]
You did?
I don't have a copy of it right now, so...
Oh, damn!
I've been trying to track down a copy of it. [laughs] And I was like, "Oh, this is expensive." So...
Yeah, I was sent a link by a friend that they had a copy listed. Including the taxes, it was just under three fucking grand.
Well, I've taken up of a lot of your time today and I really appreciate it.
Oh, I don't care. I appreciate your interest. It's really fun to talk to you too.
Edward is the best!