The year is 1991. The place is Vancouver. The singer is held aloft, like Jesus among the disciplines, by his adoring fans. His Fender strat obscures his face but the ripped jeans and dirty blond hair can only belong to one man: the legendary Kurt Cobain. The photographer’s name is stamped across the centre of the image in bold white, deliberately lower cased lettering: charles peterson. The concept and title follows in muted grey: touch me i’m sick. This gives us all the information we need about this book, whilst Peterson is a little known photographer in today’s circles, if you are interested in the scene of late 80s / early 90s grunge or rock movement then you know the name Charles Peterson; this is one for the fans.
Something else that is self-evident from this very first image is that this book, like the musical movement it documents, is unapologetically non-conformist. It is clear from the outset that there will be no stringently posed, clinically lit and masterfully edited images of the bands; Peterson shoots when he wants, what he wants and how he wants and the image of him at the back of the book taken in 1982 with his middle finger up says ‘If you don’t like it I don’t give a fuck’. And within that statement lies the whole concept of this book and, it could be said, the focus behind Peterson as a photographer as well as the appeal of the 80s/90s grunge rock movement. This book gives us a chance to view that movement from the inside as though we were there as it happened, with Peterson we are given an access all areas pass.
Famed for documenting the scene as Sub Pop’s (a record label famous for it’s grunge releases at the time) unofficial photographer, Peterson had the unique chance of documenting Seattles sudden explosion of grunge and rock bands, some of which went on to dominate the music scene. This book encompasses his early photographs from this era. Bold, brash, black and white: Peterson’s trademark style is evident in the pages of touch me i’m sick. His focus is more on catching the energy and passion of the people and experience he documents rather than on producing the perfect brightly lit, almost staged images that we see in all of today’s popular music magazines. This emphasis is clear from looking at the first twelve pages of the book. Introduced by Eddie Vedder (front man of the now world famous Pearl Jam), and with an essay by Jennie Boddy (publicist for Sub Pop at the time), the pages contain four images, in two of them the subject’s face is cut off from the composition, the other two simply show a dirty floor or a stack of amps. The inclusion of Vedder and Boddy’s texts in these opening pages shows that Peterson was well respected in the scene, both by the subjects of his images and by the people those images were produced on behalf of. The beauty of these first images, and I am including the cover image in this, is that it shows how Petersons images didn’t need to follow the same pattern as every other music Photographer working at the time. This book isn’t about straight up portraits of the singer looking great and therefore cultivating the perfect ‘Pop Star’ image, the images capture the true raw brutality of the grunge clubs and the music, musicians and fans that adored them.
Peterson’s style is consistent throughout; all the images are shot on high ISO black and white film, sometimes with a blast of flash. Always uncropped, Peterson’s images are known for the fact that what was shot at the time is what is displayed to the viewer. The rest of the book contains over ninety images by Peterson, all of which display this raw, passionate feeling in Petersons trademark gritty imagery. This reader’s interest is maintained by the varying formats Peterson uses to display his images on the page, some are single image double page spreads and some are side by side complementing each other. Throughout the book the images contain no signifiers as to who they are of until you get to the end, the last section of the book contains a couple of index pages, these are displayed as small thumbnails with the bands name, the city they were shot in and the year. Rather than cataloguing bands in neat chapters, Peterson blends his images together; Mudhoney collide with Pearl Jam, Nirvana jostle Black Flag and throughout it all the fans are omnipresent with whole pages given over to them screaming along and being thrown around in the moshpit. As well as maintaining interest this format plays another important role in the book by helping to show how interconnected the scene at that time was and also the great importance played in that by the fans and the fans experiences. One page that truly sticks out to me is a single image on a left hand page of Henry Rollins, singer of Black Flag at the time (a man who has since gone on to become a well-known name in the industry to say the least), turned away from the camera displaying his iconic tattoos, calm and ready with his microphone in hand. For me this image is immensely powerful, his onstage persona is beautifully captured and you can sense in the image just what this music lifestyle mean to him, it is everything.
To the right of this image is one of the pieces of text that pepper the book, an excerpt from ‘Melody Maker’ magazine in March 1990. Written by Everett True it asks the question “How on earth can they afford it?” He is, of course, referring to Nirvana’s obsession with trashing their instruments on stage. This is followed by an response from two of the three members of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain (the bassist and singer/guitarist respectively), “Why do I do it? Why not? It feels good. Somebody cut down a nice old tree to make that fucking guitar. Smash It! We only ever do it if the feelings right; it doesn’t matter where we are” - Kurt Cobain. In this statement echoes of the title of the book can be found, we are witnessing something beautiful in decline, something sick. What I love about this book, and I guess this could be said to be the reason I love the scene of that time as well, is the frenetic blend of emotion that went into it. On one page you have this beautifully calm image of Rollins, then a discussion of the iconic destruction that went along with the scene (a destruction that extended to its participants as well as its artifacts) beautiful is documented, and then nine pages you have images of Kurt Cobain’s frenetic stage presence. With Peterson we are privileged to witness the eye of the storm as well as the havoc within it.
As well as this, the book also contains ‘behind the scenes’ images that show the everyday reality of the people involved in the scene. We see Mudhoney at a urinal in Bristol, a ‘Reservoir Dogs’ style image of Pearl Jam walking across an airport in Spain and Beat Happening in tuxedos attending a wedding in Seattle. This shows Peterson’s ability to capture the moment off stage as well as on. Peterson was clearly someone the musicians felt comfortable with and were willing to let into their world and, because of this, we are allowed in too.
All in all I love this book. As someone who was too young to be a part of the early grunge scene, it offers the chance to put on some music, open it’s cover and lose yourself in Petersons’ world. touch me i’m sick is a book that contains passion, youth and talent whether it be the subjects themselves or Peterson as a Photographer. History has shown that the scene sadly did not last the 90s; it was, indeed, sick. And I do want to touch it.
