Hannah Taplin: Contemporary Photojournalist – Charles Peterson

Iconic grunge photographer Charles Peterson in the late 1980s

“It was the late 80’s when a new sound started to emerge; 60’s garage and 70’s punk had
awakened the gritty spirit of rock n’ roll and a rebellion was bubbling in underground
Seattle. Kurt Cobain would become the unofficial spokesman for the movement, and of a
generation and Peterson would become its photographer”

– “Photographer Charles Peterson Captured the Birth of Grunge Music in Seattle”
(Michael Chang, PetaPixel).

Layne Staley of Alice in Chains sings to a crowd in Central Tavern, downtown Seattle in 1988.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam ascends a crowd at Pinkpop Festival in 1992. Vedder always gave Peterson artistic freedom to do what he wanted while they were on tour together.  

Born in 1964 and raised in Longview, a town of 700 in central Washington State, Charles Peterson, found a love in photography when he helped his uncle develop film in a dark room. He’d worked for his high school’s newspaper and had some of his photos curated, but until he was a junior in college, he did not find his calling within a career in photography until his roommate and his friends started their own bands. In 1983, he roomed with the future vocalist of Seattle bands, Mudhoney and Green River, Mark Arm, and hung around him and his friends, who were also interested in the reform of rock and punk music. Peterson and the others all had day jobs but found themselves enthralled in the music of Seattle nightclubs and underground bands, and the young upperclassman began to capture what became known as the Grunge Movement or the “Seattle Sound.”

Taken at a 1990 Nirvana show in at the University of Washington HUB Ballroom, a stagediver leaps into a crowd despite warnings from security and Charles Peterson himself. 

What’s important to remember about the influence of the 90s grunge and its own version of counterculture is that it was an increasingly difficult time to grow up and come of age in, particularly where it originated. The timber industry of the Pacific Northwest stagnated with the failure of the economy and the hazy atmosphere became more than just a sense of climate. On the teaching platform, Teach Rock, the instructors summarized that while the anger underneath the punk music that had ruled the latter half of 80’s rock, it was too intricate and sold out too quickly, while grunge remained authentic in its angst and misery, drabbed in flannel and ripped jeans. “Grunge, with its dour visuals and indifferent lyrics, seemed to encapsulate the grey and depressed mood of the region at the time. As the 90s progressed, the commercial success of groups such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam catapulted the Grunge sound into a national spotlight for which its creators and adherents were largely unprepared” (TeachRock.Org). Young people at the time – now known as Generation X – were not looking forward to their futures, as it was predicted they would be the first generation to earn more than their parents had. The youth was lost and often ignored by those in charge of capturing their attention in the media. With the grunge movement, art emerged both musically and artistically by those who played and those who caught it all on film. Charles Peterson managed to capture the culmination of angst with a signature black and white with a wide-angle lens, by not only taking photos of the band but also the audience, in order to get that sense of composition within his work. That was ultimately his artistic aim, as he explains in a 2011 interview with Billboard. He wanted to capture everything as it happened and make the viewer feel like they were part of it. “I always wanted to freeze that exact moment and then let the ambient light do its thing with a longer shutter speed, I took it to the extreme, but also when I needed to, I pulled back with it too.Because if it's all blur it just becomes kinda meaningless. “Charles Peterson’s Iconic ‘Grunge Photos’: A Guided Tour  (Billboard).

Mudhoney's third gig at Seattle's Central Tavern. In the background, arms overhead is Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt, and ace illustrator Ed Fotheringham is holding the ubiquitous can of Schmidt beer. 

This is at Seattle's Vogue Tavern in 1990. Guitarist Donita Sparks in full grunge hair glory.

Endfest’s mosh circle, Kitsap, Washington, 1991

A fan reaches out to touch Kurt Cobain as he plays to a small club in Los Angeles, 1990.

Kurt Cobain at Raji’s nightclub in Hollywood, 1990

Kurt Cobain crowd surfs as he plays on a guitar with a broken string. 

With the dedication to his art of capturing music as it emerged as the lost voice of a generation,
Peterson managed to make up the lack of visual representation of the early grunge music and ultimately building a role model out of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, growing in popularity because of the band's growing notoriety in the underground scene. While Peterson did take photos of other bands and did go on a nationwide tour with Pearl Jam, he is most known for his photos of Nirvana and Cobain himself.  He liked to photograph Cobain because of his warm nature to other artist's, particularly photographers and even invited Peterson to photograph his daughter's first birthday party. 

However, as time passed and their music crossed into the mainstream, the once underground bands were handed instant fame; fame they wanted but were not prepared to deal with. Like many in the counterculture of the 60s, when the grunge music went mainstream, the more authentic rockers like Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, and Eddie Vedder rejected the success and desired to go back to the anonymity, particularly after the first few and largely commercialized  Lollapalooza festival. Peterson himself was growing weary of the music scene

Kurt Cobain looks over at Peterson as he plays to a crowd of 45,000 att UK Reading Festival in 1992. 

Kurt Cobain finds himself looking out at the crowd in a 1993 Seattle concert.

and the growing popularity of something that was never meant to stick around for very long.
By Cobain’s suicide in 1994, which Peterson found out about by a call by Entertainment Weekly which was asking his

for photos, the grunge photographer was ready to try something new. The grunge movement seemingly

died with Cobain in a sense of somber reflection and the angst giving out to losing its leader. In a

documentary, Peterson describes that he was initially in shock after Kurt's suicide and almost angry

because of his addiction and how he'd reacted to the last time the Nirvana frontman had gone to rehab.

Charles Peterson in his more recent years. He has since photographed at Sundance Film Festival and multiple pop artists. He also has a wife and two children. They live in San Fransisco.

Finding his own sense of nirvana, he traveled to Southeast Asia for a few years and later took jobs doing concerts for artists he didn’t necessarily care for, like Usher and
Florence & the Machine. Although the grunge movement had taken a lot out of the photographer,
he hasn’t made the same kind of connection he’d had with grunge bands in his younger days,
rocking out with his buddies in an underground Seattle club and finding solace in capturing the
defining sounds of an entire decade. He is still scanning through all of his film at the time and is still scanning them to a digital space in order to preserve them, while balancing life as a husband

and a father.