LOATHE: US Tour at The Warfield, SF
I came to The Warfield to photograph Loathe. I didn’t expect to find another photographer on the other side of my lens.
Loathe bassist Feisal El-Khazragi shoots film, and he is serious about it. Between shows, soundchecks and life on the road, he develops his own film, scans negatives and connects with other photographers from city to city. Performing every night is demanding enough. Maintaining a separate photographic practice while touring gave me a different appreciation for the person I had come to photograph.
The access began through my son, a photographer and huge Loathe fan. Together, we photographed a stacked night at San Francisco’s historic Warfield featuring Knocked Loose, Loathe, Show Me the Body, and Speed. Some of my favorite frames happened nowhere near the stage. Behind the theater, musicians and crew smoked, hauled gear, talked between sets and moved between the venue and tour buses. It was the quieter rhythm of touring, the part the crowd rarely sees.
Backstage portraits were made with a 1960s Deardorff 8×10 and Dallmeyer 3B, manually uncovering and recapping the lens for each exposure. The 6×6 work was photographed with a Rolleiflex 2.8F. Everything was shot on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed in HC-110, Dilution B.
I went in to photograph Feisal the musician. I left with just as much respect for Feisal the photographer.
