SOBS: Photo: Punk Exposure by Dusty Pilger

Anyone can go to a concert, camera in hand, and take pictures of a band. This creates still-form memories for us to recall. It’s not very complicated. (Oh but wait, I still gotta make sure to give the bass player the memo that he needs to jump at the exact same time that the singer pushes the mic into the crowd.)

My long-exposure photographs of live music performances in Chicago show that there is a lot more going on than just listening to and watching a band perform. People form very intense relationships with one another. Emotions simultaneously run through both the crowd and the band, and everyone has their favorite performer. Watching a favorite band singing a favorite song, dancing, stage diving, and singing along creates an intensity like no other, and this connection can exist in any venue, from the Allstate Arena to some kid's suburban basement. Through this photography, I show how all these factors come together during a performance.

Magic can happen at any time during a show. All of a sudden everthing is forgotten: other attendees, what people are wearing and who your allies and enemies are. Everyone becomes involved in a family that looks after each other during that band's set. I'm part of this family when I go to shows, and this music encompasses everything in my life. I collect records, listen to it on my way to work via headphones, give mix tapes to people as a way of getting to know them, and share pictures from shows that I’ve taken.

I use my camera as an extension of my own body. The viewfinder is completely irrelevant – I just move the camera with my own movements along with the music. The camera witnesses the same things that I do, then saves them in a safe place for me to cherish and share with others. Frame numbers do not exist to me when I’m taking pictures; I overlap the images, giving each picture its own uniqueness.

I want to create the feeling of a blurred memory through my photos. The overlapping forms show the movement and progression of a band's set. When at a show, the eyes don’t stay focused on one particular focal point, they wander all over the place, taking in everything, absorbing all the energy and fusing the experience into an incredible pulsating masterpiece. Capturing this energy and reproducing it in a two-dimensional format is what I'm trying to pass along to you.

– Dusty Pilger

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