Silent Pictures
by Maggie Frank
Pat Graham
Akashic Books
Available now
Bikini Kill. Modest Mouse. Fugazi. Sebadoh. If you like these bands, you’ll love Silent Pictures, Pat Graham’s first photography book. Graham toured with several of the bands featured, snapping iconic shots of ’90s DIY-indie-undergrounders performing and at rest. One look at the concert photos will convince anyone that Graham not only documented this scene but helped create it — check out his great cover art photograph for Bikini Kill’s The CD Version of the First Two Records. Photo info appears as a list at the back of the book rather than in caption form, which you can either view as an annoyance or an invitation to perform a parlor trick. After all, wallflower that you are, you may notice Silent Pictures on the coffee table during the cocktail party of a friend of a friend. You may flip the book open sullenly, recognize a face or a space, wonder whether you’re right, and then flip to the back of the book to demonstrate your knowing hipster knowingness. Is that Ted Leo singing in a dingy Brooklyn studio? Is that the Austin airport? Why, yes, yes it is.
Akashic Books
Available now
Bikini Kill. Modest Mouse. Fugazi. Sebadoh. If you like these bands, you’ll love Silent Pictures, Pat Graham’s first photography book. Graham toured with several of the bands featured, snapping iconic shots of ’90s DIY-indie-undergrounders performing and at rest. One look at the concert photos will convince anyone that Graham not only documented this scene but helped create it — check out his great cover art photograph for Bikini Kill’s The CD Version of the First Two Records. Photo info appears as a list at the back of the book rather than in caption form, which you can either view as an annoyance or an invitation to perform a parlor trick. After all, wallflower that you are, you may notice Silent Pictures on the coffee table during the cocktail party of a friend of a friend. You may flip the book open sullenly, recognize a face or a space, wonder whether you’re right, and then flip to the back of the book to demonstrate your knowing hipster knowingness. Is that Ted Leo singing in a dingy Brooklyn studio? Is that the Austin airport? Why, yes, yes it is.
