Find me in the Club
It's 2022 and it's been a minute! Hope y'all are thriving not merely surviving in this new year (shout out Lil P for that).
I've started my landscape photography journey. It's baby steps but they're steps and not just thoughts about how many things I need to do before I take any steps in order to get it perfect, so that's progress. I'll share some WIP soon.
Emo Nite came back last September after a 2ish year hiatus. Emo Nite is a DJ run party that plays said music while people scream along with every word. It’s out of LA but they have events in cities across the country. In PDX it happens once a month at Holocene (sorta kinda club). Going back to Holocene after the COVID years off I was struck to realize this will be my 8th year taking photos there. Also, with 50 cent back, clubs are cool again.
It started in 2015 with two friends from Seattle (Adam and Scott) who were DJing for Dance Yourself Clean, same idea as Emo Nite except swap in electro pop. At the time DYC was a social organizing force, we’d go up to Seattle or the Seattleites would come down to PDX for DYC nights. It was sloppy and sweaty and vibrant fun. I got the Emo Nite gig because I was already doing DYC. Eventually we aged out of the DYC crowd, our friends stopped DJing and I stepped down from taking their photos. I haven’t stopped for Emo Nite though. The crowds at Emo Nite are having such a purely damn good time it’s infectious. When I started shooting for them I didn’t recognize a single song. I expected some weird thing where people were zombie shuffling to Pedro the Lion. I didn’t know of or understand Emo=Pop Punk, and is a raging good time.
Anyways, nostalgia aside, it’s surprising and fun that my largest catalogue of photos are from Holocene. It remains just as fun to photograph. The voyueristic stalking of people’s moments on the dance floor, and isolating that moment amidst the chaos is a satisfying challenge. But mostly, being around, and interacting with a lot of people who are so happy is intoxicating. You definitely can’t help but feel the same joy.
Here are some faves:
