It was a pivotal moment in D.C.’s punk rock history, captured with an insider’s eye (and camera), that can now be experienced in a very different way, 40 years later.
Cynthia Connolly — an Arlington, Virginia-based photographer, artist, and curator, whose book, “Banned in DC: Photos and Anecdotes from the DC Punk Underground (79-85)” was one of the first books published about what became D.C.’s influential hardcore punk scene — has just released a limited edition package of five of her most iconic photos.
Connolly’s collection is called Minor Threat Photo Box Set, Dischord House, December 1982: “It’s five photographs I took of Minor Threat, in December 1982, right before they were going into the studio to record their EP ‘Out of Step,'” Connolly told WTOP. The record was initially released in April 1983.
Forty years later, Connolly isn’t sure how she happened to be in the right place to document the session, in which the band was finishing songs for what became an elemental punk rock recording.
“Ian MacKaye (the singer in Minor Threat, and co-founder of Dischord Records) and I spoke about this recently, and we can’t figure out whether they asked me to take photographs, or if I just went over and said, ‘Hey, I should take some photographs of you guys,'” Connolly said.
Connolly said based on the sequence of negatives, she began shooting even before arriving at Dischord House — a group house in North Arlington, where MacKaye and Minor Threat drummer and Dischord partner Jeff Nelson lived, rehearsed and maintained an office.
Connolly said guitarist Brian Baker picked her up in the band van, from her home in Northwest DC, for the trip to Dischord House. One of the photos shows Baker’s white sneaker atop the steering wheel. “I think he’s joking, but he was driving with one of his feet, and one hand,” said Connolly in a making-of-video for the box set. “Hopefully, he’s at a light — maybe not.”
Another well-known photo shows MacKaye at Dischord House, sitting in a chair, drinking a soda, holding a paper bag, with a housemate standing behind him, wielding an electric razor. “They’re shaving his head, and putting the hair in the Mario’s Pizza House bag.”
The restaurant, located on Wilson Boulevard, was a few blocks from the bungalow that housed band members and the young record label.
Nelson is pictured in the office. Guitarist Lyle Preslar and bassist Steve Hansgen are seen in the basement rehearsal space, with a ceiling so low that band members had to stand between ceiling joists.
Although photos from Connolly’s negative sheet labeled “Minor Threat taken for Out of Step, 12-82” didn’t end up on the original release, two were used later in the band’s “Salad Days” EP.
Instead, the cover of “Out of Step” included a Connolly-created drawing of a black sheep in crayon, with a flock of white sheep in watercolor.
What’s old is now new
Connolly took the photographs, using Tri-X black and white 35 mm film that she processed in the Corcoran School of Art darkroom, while working on her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Although the subjects and stories frozen in her photographs haven’t changed, the ways in which they are displayed, have. In the early 1980s, the punk story was typically told in do-it-yourself punk magazines, dubbed zines.
“That’s where you saw the photographs — you would see it in a zine, Xeroxed,” said Connolly.
With 40 years of hindsight, Connolly said the original low-tech display of her photos was in-keeping with the nascent punk scene. “What was important was happening now. ‘I’m going to the show now.’ It was all about now, now, now, and sort of the future.”
Connolly said she’s been contemplating the idea of a box set for years. “It might have even been before social media, which is a long time ago,” she laughed.
Since newsprint yellows and deteriorates over time, Connolly wanted to find a way that her images could physically withstand the test of time.
“I have this British biscuit box that’s probably from the 1920s, that I bought at a yard sale in 1981,” Connolly said. Inside the box she’s kept postcards and ticket stubs she’s held onto over the years. “When I open the box, multiple stories unfold in my head — it’s like a scrapbook.”
Enter Minor Threat Photo Box Set, Dischord House, December 1982, in a limited edition of 25.
Last month, Connolly created custom prints from her original negatives in her darkroom, using old-school technology, including an enlarger.
“Silver gelatin is the technical name for a black and white darkroom analog photographic print, made by allowing light through the negative that is mounted in the enlarger where light-sensitive paper is exposed in a timed setting,” Connolly explained. “The photo paper is then individually hand processed through an hour long multiple chemical bath process.”
Connolly estimates she spent 28 hours creating each image, printed on Ilford Multigrade Classic paper, by hand.
“These photographs, if stored properly and in its original archival photo storage box, should last a lifetime, if not longer,” she said.
Unlike zines, which Connolly sold at early 80s shows for a dollar apiece, the price for the box-set, with each photo signed on the back in pencil, is $2,400.
DIY, revisited
Connolly realizes the incongruity of creating a piece of fine art, given the subject matter: “It’s sort of precious, which is kind of not punk. It’s a dichotomy.”
With the hours of hands-on work in the darkroom, she notes the parallel to the early days of do-it-yourself punk: “The Minor Threat first 7-inch was folded and glued, and we all hung out together and folded and glued them. A lot of that was the handwork and doing it by hand, and I guess that this is like the same thing.”
Some things have changed for Connolly, and many of those who were immersed in D.C. punk scene, in the early 1980s.
“There wasn’t this looking back at the past, so it’s interesting to think about this, because now we’re looking back at the past a lot,” she said.
She hopes that opening the box set, viewing the photos, and the letter-pressed library pocket on the outside lid of the box that includes a photocopy of a Minor Threat flyer from her personal collection, will spark “multiple layers of stories” for others.
“The idea is to have this box that you can put in your bookcase, and pull it out and look at it, like I do with my box of tickets.”
Editor’s note: Clarifies the number of hours to produce each print, and the paper it is printed upon.
