“As a social documentary photographer I realized right away how important these events were to document. To this day I cannot tell you what the music sounded like... I would get into a visual zone and hear nothing and see everything.” - Thurston Howes

        Thurston Howes, a professional photographer from Virignia, shot these remarkable images during the reign of Punk Rock. He wasn’t a part of the local punk scene, but rather a photography student pursuing his Masters. In 1982 he saw a punker on the street and had a powerful reaction. So he bravely set out with his clunky Kowa Super 66 6x6 SLR, a Vivitar 285 strobe and Tri-X, and literally dove right into the mosh pit.

                                                                    Scroll Down for an interview with Howes.

All photographs Copyright Thurston Howes, all rights reserved, no reproduction allowed without written permission from the photographer.

See more at: http://www.thurstonhowes.com/; www.flickr.com/photos/thphoto1  or contact Thurston Howes at thphoto1@yahoo.com

THURSTON HOWES TALKS ABOUT HOW THESE PHOTOS CAME TO LIFE:

I was working on my MFA in photography at Virginia Commonwealth University and was walking down the street one day and saw this punk rocker with his hair spiked up, dressed in black.

He intimidated me so much I could not look at him. So I decided one of the hardest things that I could do would be to try to photograph him. That's how it got started. I started shooting in color then realized that all I saw was color not the person or the event, so I switched to B&W (the events were very surreal to me).

I also like the fact that B&W adds an abstract quality that requires the viewer to look at the photograph differently, as a more stark, realistic, and surreal image. This helps capture the emotions, motions and feel of the night. 

As a social documentary photographer I realized right away how important these events were to document. To this day I cannot tell you what the music sounded like at the shows. I would get into a visual zone and hear nothing and see everything.

After I starting photographing the shows I quickly knew that I could not rely on conventional photographic techniques to capture what was happening. Fast movement, dark spaces & close quarters all spelled disaster. I could not focus fast enough. My exposures were bad, nothing seemed to work.

So I stopped to regroup. I was shooting with a Kowa Super 66 medium format (square 2-1/4 x 2-1/4" image size) with a 55mm lens and a Vivitar 285  flash. I decided to try zone focusing (use the depth of field scale on the lens to determine depth of field). If I set the flash on one of the automatic modes I could expose my film (Tri-X) at f16. Using zone focusing I realized I could have everything from 3 ft to about 20 feet in sharp focus. I knew I wanted to get close to the action and be a part of it. That solved my out-of-focus problem but it left me with dark, dingy negatives. Next I had to deal with exposure.

A friend suggested I try bi-lateral contrast control to increase the detail in the shadow area without blowing out the highlights. With this technique you basically give the film more exposure than recommended by the manufacturer, thus opening up the shadows (shadow detail is determined by exposure) and compacting the development of the film, which controls the highlights of the neg.  

Thus you open up the shadows and bring the contrast down. I exposed the Tri-X (ISO 400) as a film with an ISO of 200 thus giving it 1 stop more of exposure. If I compacted the development by about 20% I could keep detail in the highlights. Problems solved.

All I had to do now was watch and try to anticipate what was about to happen because if I waited to see it through the viewfinder I would miss the photograph by a second or so. I believe in "The Decisive Moment," when everything comes together with truth and integrity I also believe that truths must be discovered and cannot be constructed; one must go out and discover images and capture them, and become involved, which requires concentration, sensitivity, a sense of geometry and utmost respect. A photographer must always take photographs with the greatest respect for the subject and oneself.

There is a dignity that should be maintained and respected. These photographs were great fun to create; the people treated me with great respect and shared their culture with me. I look at my photography as an exchange of humanities; people share with me some of their culture some of their self and I respond in exchange by giving them the best that I have, photographs of themselves. As a photographer you owe it to the people you photograph to give something back in exchange for them sharing their life with you. Every night that I went out photographing was an adventure. I didn't know what I would see or do that night it was an amazing time and amazing events.

After photographing every night I would head straight to the darkroom. In the post visualization stage in the darkroom printing I tried many ideas before I settled on printing with Ilford Gallerie double weight 11x14" paper using Dr. Beers developer I liked Dr. Beers because I could use one grade of Gallerie (#3) and change the contrast to suit me by changing the formulation of Dr. Beers. My favorite approach was to use Beers contrasty formulation first then a less contrasty developer. I did this as 2 developer baths keeping the total time of the two baths to under 5 minutes of development with constant agitation. This seemed to produce luscious blacks with great detail and crisp brilliant highlights. I also experimented with Amidol, with great results also.

Two fixer baths were followed by a water wash hype eliminator and finally I would use a selenium toner bath to make the photographs archival, followed by a one hour wash in a archival print washer. I did a lot of experimenting to determine how long I could develop my paper before I got chemical and or safelight fog, I tried lots of other experiments including bleaching prints with potassium cynanide (very dangerous) but great for clearing highlights.

--Thurston Howes, 2008

Colin: of  the band GBH was one of the first portraits I did. It was taken outside of a little club called Bennies. Colin was drinking wine out of a jug and said it was the first time he had had wine out of a jug.

Gretta: At the time she played in a band called Unseen Force.  She has played with about everyone, and remains a treasure of the Richmond, Virginia area.

Whipping Boy: One of the first high energy shows I photographed. The singer, Eugene, is from Palo Alto.  I thought that at any minute he was going to jump out of his skin. (Eugene’s current band is noise rocker OxBow.-E.R.)

Kim K.  

AKA "The Raven"  She was beautiful that night but very manly in the way she held her beer bottle

Steve Hunter:  Steve was in a local band. He asked me several times to photograph him but I could never figure out how. I walked into a club

 one night and there he was. Perfect.  Steve passed away a few years ago

Henry Rollins: Insane show at Hard Times. Henry with long hair taken in the early 80's

COC:  a band from N.C. Taken in a small club called Going Bananas. It felt like a religious experience. Eric Eykc was whipping the mic around like it was a snake

3 arm 3 leg man:   These two guys were throwing each other over each other’s shoulders;  looked like fun