From Punk to Sontag: Photographer Susie Horgan's Images Find Publisher in a Bookstore

Susie J. Horgan's photographs documenting the punk music scene of Washington, D.C., circa 1980, were published this year in Punk Love (Universe/Rizzoli). The gritty and emotive photos, taken by Horgan more than 25 years ago, when she was a college student scooping ice cream at a local Haagen-Daz, might have remained unpublished, except for an encounter between Books & Books' Mitchell Kaplan and Rizzoli's Charles Miers.

At the time the photos were taken, Horgan was a student at American University. "When I went to D.C., I had already caught the music bug, and saw some punks hanging out at Haagen-Dazs," she recently told BTW. "I needed some work, and some friendship. I walked into Haagen-Dazs and asked for a job, and a fellow named Henry hired me on the spot and put me on the schedule that night."

That fellow was Henry Rollins, who at the time was fronting the incendiary punk band S.O.A. (Rollins later performed with Black Flag and eventually established his own publishing imprint, 2.13.61 Publications). Another person working at that same ice cream shop was Ian MacKaye, a member of the Teen Idles who was in the midst of co-forming a pivotal independent D.C. record label, Dischord. (MacKaye would subsequently front such key D.C. bands as Fugazi and Minor Threat -- whose first single's cover featured a photograph by Horgan).

One day, Horgan brought her new camera into the ice cream shop and took a bunch of photos of her punky co-workers. "They were the first images I ever took -- it was the first time I ever touched the shutter," she said, speaking of the photos, which appear at the beginning of Punk Love.

Soon after, Horgan shot a photograph that became the cover of the first Teen Idle's record, which was also the first release from Dischord. It was of a teenage punk -- MacKaye's brother Alec, who fronted Faith and later Ignition -- whose hands were marked with an "X" by a club to designate his underage status. For the next eight months, for her Photography 101 class, Horgan captured the kids who lived and breathed punk -- or hardcore, as it became known -- onstage, hanging out, and forming a fresh and incendiary scene committed to social action, teen rights, and a do-it-yourself ethos. And those photographs are what comprise Punk Love.

Horgan's stint in D.C. was short -- it lasted only until June of 1981. Years later, when she began a new chapter in her life, she experienced a similar situation at a place of employment. But rather than serving ice cream and photographing punk musicians, she was bookselling and photographing authors. "When I moved to Miami, it was a very similar relationship," she said. "I was in a new place, and I wanted to get a job to kind of learn about the community, so I walked into this cool bookstore [Books & Books], and asked for a job, and Mitchell [Kaplan, the store's owner] gave me a job."

As the authors arrived at Books & Books for readings and talks, Susie photographed them with the same candid, revealing style that marked her photos of punk rockers. "They came into the store to do a reading, and I would photograph them, kind of shooting in the very visceral way I always shoot, and it was a scene and a community. I was carrying on a theme of social consciousness that I developed in D.C. -- me documenting a voice, justice, freedom. And, a lot of these authors spoke to me, and it moved me. It's been kind of an evolution. I've documented musicians, and authors, and civil justice, in Haiti or Cuba. I document my life, and my friends."

"Her photographs: There's really a sense of emotion," Kaplan told BTW. "And sense of humanity. She took some really wonderful ones of Susan Sontag -- they're remarkable. And all the photos are all so good: Russell Banks, Isabel Allende, Annie Leibovitz, Jamaica Kincaid. She took a wonderful photograph of Dave Barry and Pat Conroy."

The book project came about when Kaplan was chatting with Miers, Rizzoli's publisher, in the Books & Books coffee shop. "We were talking about all the photographs we had of all the authors, and I mentioned to him about Susie and about this other [D.C. punk] body of work she also has, and he was very interested in that. So I hooked them both up."

"We decided that this scene really stood on its own," Horgan continued. "And Universal/Rizzoli took a very punk approach, or Charles really understood my organic approach. And he so respected the project and respected Ian and Henry, and didn't want to do any type of corporate control -- there was a lot of freedom, and we were all on that same page."

Horgan added that she never actually intended to have the photographs in Punk Love published, until the idea for the book came up. "I sat on these photographs for 25 years, and realized how they developed a life of their own," she said.

The book begins with a forward by Rollins. "There is not one photo in this collection that does not merit repeated viewing. The music and the scene that surrounded it gave many of us a sense of belonging and the opportunity to express ourselves," he writes. "Look at the faces. Everyone is so young and the glowing enthusiasm is so real. Aside from the greatness of the music, the most appealing aspect of the D.C. scene ... was how unguarded and open everyone was."

When asked if anything in particular was going through her mind when she took those gritty punk photos, Horgan replied, "No, no. And I still don't operate like that. It either clicks or it doesn't. And I move with it. I'm in rhythm with the band, in rhythm with the environment. And I use that [D.C. punk] period as a barometer for all my work. Because I know the connection you can feel. When you're clicking, you're part of it. And I know that when I achieve that level, that my photos are going to rock."

"I hope that you'll look at that book in a way that you'll think about not the artists, not the bands," MacKaye added. "I don't think of it like, 'Wow, this is like we were going to create a new movement or industry or something." Just think of it as kids, people, human beings who arrived at a point in their lives, and were like, "OK, who am I? What am I going to do? My time with my biological family, or nuclear family, is coming to an end, and that transition, from being a teenager, that is a very confusing time. What they're really doing is trying to find something that they can actually belong to. And I feel that that is what you see in those photos. You see these kids who essentially created their own family, and that for me is what is so beautiful about it." --Jeff Perlah