MUSIC

For future projects, when I started doing more legitimate studio work and band photos, people knew I was a photographer already, and they knew me from the Bottle. I think those two [factors] made me a comfortable person to reach out to, to get band photos done.

In 2015, I remember, I did my first legitimate paid band photo, for Negative Scanner. It was also the last B Side cover of the Reader. That was the first time a band had really intentionally reached out to me for photos. Then I think I got more focused on doing portraits and studio work, not necessarily band photos. I was most often reached out to for those initially—because, I think, of the Bottle.

In 2016, 2017, I started renting a studio space and got really serious about teaching myself studio photography. I went to school for a year and a half, but I only learned the basics of how to shoot manually—so studio equipment and lighting, I had to teach myself all of that. Thankfully there were places like Latitude. I took a bunch of classes at Latitude, this print shop in Chicago, and they really helped fill in some educational gaps.

I felt like part of the music community pretty early on. I’m just now starting to feel like I’m part of this photo community. That is a recent development. I’ve been shooting long enough, and I feel comfortable and sound enough in my skill sets that I can say I’m a photographer and I’m a part of that community. But Chicago has always felt like a really welcoming place to me. That’s my experience—that’s why, once I got here, it felt so easy to stay.

I don’t have a lot of strong family ties or long-term people in my life. I’ve been in Chicago for almost ten years now. There’s something so wonderful about entering a room or space and seeing someone that maybe you’ve seen peripherally—like maybe I just see them at shows, but I’ve been seeing this person at shows for a decade, and there’s so much comfort I find in that, knowing that I do have ties, a history, and a sense of belonging in a space.

And I think the Chicago music scene—and especially at the Bottle, and the way shows were run there and how seriously everyone took making people feel comfortable in the space—it feels like a community to be proud of being a part of.