Every Photograph Tells A Story
On June 17th, 1995 my now ex-wife and I were expecting the birth of our first daughter, Abby. We were at St John Hospital in Santa Monica and the nurses told us that she needs to walk around to try to help get the delivery moving forward. We took a drive down to the 3rd Street Promenade to walk around. It was a beautiful summer day.
As we walked we decided to take a look around Tower Records....yes there were record stores back then. As we checking out the book section, I came across Henry Rollins's book "Get In the Van”. I was like “holy shit this is fucking cool!!!!” I loved Black Flag I was in the scene in the early 1980’s. They were the center of my punk rock universe. As I went through the book I was brought back to my time as a teenaged punker. All the photos in the book were amazing!
When I got to page 70, I said to my ex, who was ready to pop at any moment, ”I took that photo!! That is my photo…WTF??!!!!” I was blown away. This was so unexpected. I was shocked and speechless as I tried to figure out how my photo got into Henry’s book and I having no idea how it got there. The location caption said “San Pedro” when in actuality it was from the January 14th, 1983 gig at Mi Casita, in Torrance. It did have my name on the photo credit so that was very cool. I was now really into the book and I was probably being an inattentive prick for not focusing on my pregnant now ex-wife.
Henry at Mi Castia January 14th, 1982
As I continued to turn the pages, another one showed up on page 76 from the August 22nd (not 20th), 1983 gig at The Vex. I was flabbergasted! “Another one!” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Try to paint this picture in your mind…me a conservative looking thirty year old father to be (I was far removed from the punk rock world) with a look of pure disbelief at a Tower Records in Santa Monica and a very pregnant woman who was hours away from giving birth. Talk about a crazy situation!
Page 76
Things got really interesting on page 113 when I saw my shot of Henry grinding the mic into his stomach at the Ukrainian Hall gig on December 10th 1982. This one got me kinda annoyed because location for the photo was Lawerence, Kansas and the photo credit went to Chris Mageri. Who the fuck is Chris Mageri??? And the date was September 29th, 1984! I had already left the scene in August of 1983 when I left for college. Dont’ get me wrong, having a photo in his book was awesome but three???…mind-blowing and thrilling!
"I am going to find a way to connect with Henry and ask what's the deal”. After I purchased the book we went back to the hospital.
Not long there after I was able to connect with Henry via his management company. He had remembered me from my high school days being around SST HQ in Redondo Beach. His explanation was pretty simple…he couldn’t find a way to contact me to get my permission and he had a deadline to the publisher…or something like that. I really didn’t give a shit. In my mind, Henry gets a pass because he is Henry Rollins of Black Flag. Of course my answer would have been YES! He was very cool and apologetic. The mistake I made was not asking him for an autographed book!
Fast forward to January 2020 when I started to write my book “Punk: Photos From A Fan’s Perspective” I reached out again to Henry asking if he had the high res copies of those photos.
Here is the actual email interactions:
ME:
January 4th, 2020
Hi,
I am emailing to discuss having Henry write the forward for my book tentatively titled "Punk Fan: Photos from the Fans Perspective". I have known Henry since he was in Black Flag and have many photos of him that will be used in my book and my solo photo show at Fathom Gallery in West Los Angeles in January 2020. The Fathom website is www.fathom.gallery
Please let me know the process for connecting with Henry and his management team to discuss. I have attached some of my photos of Henry. He should remember me from the South Bay and from his book Get In The Van. I have a few pictures featured in the book and in the recent documentary, Capital Punk.
It has been many years since we have talked.
Thank you in advance,
Kevin Salk
HENRY:
January 7th, 2020
Kevin. Hello. I'm glad you're getting a book done, that's great. I can't write the foreword but thanks for the interest. Good luck with the event and the book.
ME:
January 7th, 2020
Henry,
Thank you for you email,
I do request a small but very important favor. You put three of my pictures in your book Get in the Van. I was surprised but excited to see my pictures in your book. It was the first time I was published (Thank You!). I do not have the negatives for those pictures or even a quality print. They are pictures that I would like to put in my book since I own the copyright to them. The picture on page 113 was credited to Chris Mager for a show in Lawerence, KS but I took that picture at the December,1982 show at the Ukrainian Hall in LA. That is one of my favorites.
Here are the pictures and corresponding pages. If you could have your publisher or someone from your team send me a jpeg or hi res scan of each picture I would be very grateful. The pictures are from Mi Casita, The Vex, and Ukrainian Hall.
Thank you again for your support for my pictures. I was a fun time to be a kid with a camera.
Kevin Salk
HENRY:
January 8th, 2020
Kevin, hello. We don't have the photos either. The place that printed the book, Palace Press, reportedly burned down with all out photos and artwork in it. I never have believed this and think they just went out of business and trashed everything. We lost flyers, drawings, photos, many of which, like yours, we've never been able to replace. We make scans off the preexisting book. I'll fix the discrepancies with your photos in the next run, if we ever do it. Thanks. Henry
Well there you go! My daughter, Abigail, was born early in the morning on June 18th, 1995 which also happened to be Father’s Day so it couldn’t get much better than that. I have been divorced for over ten years. Perhaps she was still pissed over the Tower Records/Back In The Van book/my photos thing?
