Posts Tagged ‘Music’

Mandy Line, lead singer of Helium5

Sunday, September 10th, 2023

Shared with Your friends and Mandy’s friends

….May 2023….Mandy Line, lead singer of Helium5…. a mutual friend in Dresden introduced us.

i’ve never had much luck photographing metal bands. in the early 2000s, i covered a few hardcore and nu-metal bands from the New England hardcore scene and southern US. none of them were interested in being in front of my camera. the photos were always the same, angry guys usually giving the camera the middle finger. i also think it had to do with me not looking or being part of that scene.

i was immediately interested when i learned about Mandy. the first time we met was on a Saturday night, i navigated several trams around 11pm to get to Mandy’s flat in a part of Dresden i had never been to. we spent most of the time telling stories on the terrace. it was apparent from the start of our conversation that i met someone genuine. it took me a while to nurse a beer down before i had to find my way back at 2am. Dresden isn’t “the city that doesn’t sleep”, so getting around after midnight is cumbersome.

this was the last photograph at the band’s rehearsal space in the basement of a massive monolithic building constructed during the GDR that probably could withstand a nuclear blast. i hadn’t photographed a band in 15 years. i was exhausted at the end of a long trip, but i was reinvigorated seeing Helium5 play and listening to them tell stories. we shared a laugh when they told me about the time Depeche Mode played East Berlin, and some of the crowd did not believe they were really playing until Depeche Mode walked on stage.

i enjoyed photographing Mandy and the band. there’s a lot of intensity in her story. this photograph is more somber than the others taken that night. there will be more….

Porno For Pryos

Tuesday, July 12th, 2022

….Washington, DC ….July 1997… During July 1997, I was hired to photograph a Greenpeace protest across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Greenpeace wanted to halt the launch of the Cassini spacecraft, which many years later delivered spectacular photographs of Saturn and its moons. Greenpeace feared that if Cassini exploded, the radioactive material used to power it would spread throughout the atmosphere. 

To attract publicity Greenpeace had Porno For Pyros play an acoustic set. I graduated university a year earlier, and was freelancing while assisting photographers in Washington, DC and NY. Assisting meant sweeping the darkroom, holding bags, and mixing chemicals. It wasn’t a glamorous start for a 22-year-old with a degree in Political Science.  Greenpeace didn’t pay me, but I was thrilled to photograph Porno For Pyros. That steamy afternoon I put on my Good God’s Urge! t-shirt, the band’s second album, and took a metro towards the White House. 

They played 4 songs in front of a hundred people. I was so close to the band that I shot some photos with a fish-eye lens.I had never photographed a famous band before.    

After they played, Stephen Perkins (drummer/percussionist) walked over to the food vendor that I was getting a hot dog from. He autographed my t-shirt. I still have it, unwashed 25-years-later to make sure the signature doesn’t fade. We spoke for a couple of minutes, he corrected me after I mistakenly referred to the bass player as “Martin” instead of “Martyn.” Stephen then asked me to send the photos to their manager, Roger Leonard. 

When I got my prints back from the lab, I sent some to Venice Beach with a thank you note. Weeks later, Roger left a message on my answering machine. Jane’s Addiction was reuniting for the “Relapse Tour.” On the night before Halloween, I photographed Jane’s Addiction.  That was the start of my career photographing bands. I photographed their tour, then tours with the Cure, Verve, Radiohead, and Smashing Pumpkins. I was on the road for a year, before returning to NY to become a portrait and editorial photographer. It started with a conversation while I was buying a hot dog in front of the White House.

Dave Navarro, Jane’s Addiction

Wednesday, February 9th, 2022

…Dave Navarro, Jane’s Addiction…The night before Halloween 1997, Hammerstein Ballroom…Jane’s Addiction was the first band I photographed.  They were the Best and the most fun band to photograph. They always gave an intense performance with a lot going on visually. 

It was the beginning of my career and I had no idea what I was doing.  I really didn’t deserve to be there with my camera.  At that point I just reacted to what I saw.  They were energetic and the crowds were overzealous even before the band went on the stage.  The air was drenched with adrenaline.  Sweat dripped down my hair into the camera while I frantically loaded the next roll of film.  It was 36 shots, then I got the next roll of film out of my pocket while the exposed film was rewinding.  Pop the back of the camera open and load the film in seconds without looking while there was chaos on stage, and a surging crowd pushing against the barrier at my back.  I never looked back at the hundreds of people because if that wave broke through only the instinct of running underneath the stage would spare me from being trampled.   I was always soaked in sweat after I photographed. 

I haven’t photographed bands in a long time because my work has progressed to documenting more serious subjects.  But when I’m lost, I try to think back to the beginning, when I was in over my head but found solace in not knowing much about the world and living in the moment. 

Grasshopper, Mercury Rev

Thursday, February 3rd, 2022

Looking through a box of prints when I photographed Grasshopper from the band Mercury Rev. September 1998 feels like forever ago. Grasshopper was releasing his solo album Orbit of Eternal Grace on the Beggars Banquet record label. I instantly became a Mercury Rev fan after I heard the song Chasing a Bee. Their seminal album Deserter’s Songs was released a month after I took these photos.

Grasshopper was the first portrait session I had with a musician. The preceding year and a half, I was photographing Jane’s Addiction, The Cure and Radiohead while they toured. In July 98′, a friend told me that Beggars Banquet had put up a post on a chatboard searching for a photographer to take promotional shots of their artists. At the time, the internet was primitive and chat boards were the common way of connecting to people. Email just began to take hold of how young people communicated. Most people were still using phones attached to a wall.

I was photographing the Smashing Pumpkins tour, Adore. I drove up to NY with my 8×10 portfolio to show Leslie, the head of Beggars. My portfolio consisted of live band photographs. I told Leslie I had no clue how to photograph portraits but I wanted to try. I was practicing by photographing friends with a fisheye lens and cross-processing slide film. Cross processing was a fad in the 90’s that produced vibrant and unpredictable color shifts. Despite having no portrait experience, Leslie took a chance on me. This was an opportunity to return home and restart my young career. Eighteen months of touring bands had run its course. I wanted to photograph portraits of people while they were in their element.

After photographing my last show of the Smashing Pumpkins tour, I drove up I-95 in my dilapidated two-door 1984 Toyota which had logged 200,000 miles. The thick summertime air blew through the open window because I had no air conditioning. I was the only car sputtering on the highway at 2am until I got near the NY exits. It was a new start at 24-years-old. A real portrait assignment paying good money and a return to NY- the center of the economic boom the empire was experiencing!!! It was a different era than the NY blight that I grew-up in. In 98′, NY probably felt like what Rome did at its height.

I didn’t have much to unpack. A few days later, I spoke to Leslie about the photograph. The only problem was Leslie had lost contact with Grasshopper for weeks and the deadline for his album’s publicity loomed. This was before cell phones, so messages were left on answering machines after the beep. Leslie was ready to give-up and my opportunity was fading away. Luckily, Grasshopper returned.

We photographed for hours around SOHO and NOLITA. The area wasn’t as commercialized yet and interesting patches of backgrounds still existed. He brought a large grasshopper made of wire. I shot some of the portraits with a fisheye lens and color infrared film that made green and red jump off the film. I thought the experimental look matched his unique album. The B/W print underneath the color print was dipped in watered down bleach which wore away the midtones. The first prints dipped were eaten away.

I shot a lot of film. I always feared going back to a client with blank rolls of film. I dropped my color film off at the lab on Broadway and Houston. Then I held my breath until they handed me a contact sheet two days later. After I saw that there were images on the film, my worries shifted to finding a good photo on the contact sheets. Twenty-five years later, it’s the same experience.

I haven’t seen Grasshopper since he disappeared into a sea of people on Broadway. Weeks later, Mercury Rev’s album Deserter’s Songs became a critically acclaimed album. Every music magazine heaped well deserved praise on the band’s masterpiece.

Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead

Friday, November 22nd, 2019
Documents 071

Le Tigre

Sunday, August 18th, 2019

Le Tigre for Resonance Magazine

….The Ropes

Wednesday, July 31st, 2019
..November 2018.. ..Newark..

..Sharon Shy ..The Ropes

The Ropes

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019

..April 2013.. ..New York..

A music video I just shot with The Ropes for their single Black All Day, Bright All Night.

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Robert Smith, The Cure gallery print available

Sunday, January 27th, 2019

There are a couple of prints available from last year’s exhibition. All are custom B/W photography prints made on tradition B/W paper in the darkroom.

The limited edition prints are an edition of 10 signed, unless noted. Signed and numbered. All prints come with artist certificate.

Please contact me at paule.saviano@gmail.com if you’re interested.

16×20 Limited edition $400. 1 available
20×24 Limited Edition $475. 1 available
30×40 Limited Edition (5) $750. 2 available

Rancid

Friday, June 1st, 2018

Tim Armstrong of Rancid playing at the Van’s Warped Tour.