PETERSON on COBAIN

“God, it's been ten years...

“I woke the morning of Kurt's death thinking that I should call him. I'd run into him on the street about ten days earlier and we exchanged phone numbers. Then I thought, "Nah—quarter to eleven is too early," and at that moment, my phone rang. I learned that he had died (but not yet how) from a photo editor at Entertainment Weekly.

“Rolling Stone was on call waiting...

“I can't say I knew Kurt well—we were merely acquaintances who enjoyed and appreciated each other, and the knowledge that we were all in this together. But I always felt quite shy around him. Probably because we came from entirely different sides of the tracks,  and only really connected through our love of punk rock. While I was taking “Shakespeare 111” and “Weimar Art and Culture 496” at the University of Washington and shooting my friends' bands by night, Kurt was running away from his trailer home and sleeping under the bridges of Aberdeen. Of course, we were both drowning our disparate-but-universal existential pains in whatever substances we could lay our hands on.  

“Kurt took it one step further. And the world hurled him out there, way too far, way too soon. I never felt entirely comfortable waving a camera in his face. My shyness lent itself to capturing him live, unguarded. Kurt, in a way, scared the shit out of me—not that he meant to (Courtney's a whole 'nother story). It was about my own shit. I think Kurt and his music tapped into a lot of our collective "own shit." Maybe that's why he's always seemed so much larger than life and, ultimately, unapproachable. Makes for a fascinating subject, but a tragic life lived.  

“I never purported having set out to photograph the history of this thing. That’s not my style. I didn’t need to. I was there. I lived it. This is what passed in front of my lens, a reflection of how my brain communicated with eye and finger, inside a rock and roll club. For me, it’s important that the photographs stand on their own as purely great photographs. Try temporarily divorcing these images from our cult of celebrity and its insistent need to categorize. Relish the detail. Converse Hi-Tops. Duct tape. Hands. Big muffs. Blurs. Budweisers cans. Torn knees. Ballet. The elements filling the frame—lines converging, textures and patterns reemerging, negative spaces balancing, scenarios opening; everything perfect—but then not quite.

“What kept me coming back for more was the fun—the high, divine release that comes from jumping up and down madly for an hour courtesy of your pals, roommates, heroes, beer—whatever—on voice, guitar, drums, bass. It’s about that afterwards sound of your ears ringing and the feel of sweat hitting the cold night air as you reel out of the club. It felt like you were really alive, if only for just a moment."

—Charles Peterson
February 2004, Seattle