Straight Edge since Eighty Eight
I got into the straight edge culture and music in 88, listening to bands like Minor Threat, Youth of today, 7 seconds Gorilla Biscuits and so on. At that time I was in art school and skateboarding was the biggest parts of my life. But it was not until 92 I met Peter Amdam and got friends in the Oslo scene, that I startet taking photos at shows and of bands. I moved to oslo and the coming years turned out to be the peak of the "second wave" of the hardcore and straight edge scene. There were frequent shows with bands from all over the world.
The purpose of this archive is to just make them public, as they have been stuffed away in storage for years.I have so many good memories from this period, and I know others also have. So it feels good to share them. I also frequently get requests from people, bands and labels wanting to buy prints or photos. Either privately or commercially. This makes it a lot easier.
So the selection here is very generous, not by any means only my best shots. Its intent is to serve as good memories for people seeing themselves in the crowd, just as much as the band itself.
Hare Krishna,
Ole Christian Petterson
Gear and film
Almost all my photos were shot with the same setup. Nikon F4, battery pack, 20mm f 2.8 and a flash SB-24. Depending on light, shutter and aperture varied. But usually it was f 5.6 and 1/15th sec. Give and take a few steps. Always manual focus put in zone to give sharpness within working range.
Film was mostly Kodak T-Max 3200 pushed to iso 400. I liked how it made it more shadow separating. I developed it usually in the T-Max developer, sometimes the D-76 developer. Occasionally I used other films, such as Tri-x, T-Max400 and Ilford HP5. Darkroom was Durst medium format enlarger and Schneider lens. Ilford Multigrade paper.
