Kurt Cobain: 10 Rare & Unseen Photos by Charles Peterson
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Nirvana's Kurt Cobain photographed by Charles Peterson, January 1993.
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Nirvana live, Raji's, L.A., 1990
Photographer Charles Peterson: "Everything just came together, partly because the club was so small and the crowd so enthusiastic and I was just on. I got some really amazing photos. The woman on the far left who has hair in her face, that's actually Donita Sparks from the band L7. Kurt is throwing himself back and forth and [Sparks' friend's] finger is inches away from his face. When you can incorporate the audience into [a shot], it tells that much more of the story. Sometimes you go someplace and people just stand around. I think it was the L7 girls that were really inspirational that night. Sometimes it just takes a few people from the crowd to make it come together."
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Kurt's daughter Frances Bean's first birthday party, 1993
"This is actually the first time it's been shown. It's just a great moment of him and Frances. This is the house in Lake City [Seattle] that somebody finally rented to them, in the kitchen. I think he was a little overwhelmed too [that day] because I've got a picture somewhere of the living room and just dozens of toys. Somebody bought a trike and put an anarchy symbol on it. Which was great. But at the same time, after the guests were gone, he just looked at me and shook his head. I said, 'A lot of stuff, huh?' And he said, 'Yeah.' He lived a pretty simple life. He didn't come from money."
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Nirvana live, University of Washington HUB Ballroom, 1989
"This show was before 'Bleach' was released. They were the openers for The Fluid. The thing I love about this photo is it encapsulated everything that I was trying to do with my photography at the time, trying to capture this texture and emotion of what these musicians were doing with their guitars and hair and ripped jeans. This is really what [you saw] when you saw Kurt Cobain play back then. A few years later, I took one almost identical of Courtney Love facing the other way. When I did my book 'Touch Me I'm Sick' they did a special edition of it with prints in a box set and I did these two, this one of Kurt and the other one of Courtney."
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Nirvana live, Reading Festival, 1992
"I was one of the few photographers invited to the side of the stage. To one side of me was a sea of 45,000 people who'd all been drenched in rain and mud that day. And another 30 feet out was Kurt -- [it was] huge stage, especially for three guys to command. About four songs in, he paused and he looked at me and in body language was like, 'Everything ok over there?" I took his picture and I gave him a thumbs up. He gave me a little nod. Like, 'How are [Nirvana] doing?' You're doing f*cking amazing... Rumors [had been] swirling that he was too sick to play so that's why he [jokingly] wore the hospital gown and they wheeled him out in a wheelchair. He was just playing up to it."
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Nirvana live, Motorsports International Garage, Seattle 1990
"I didn't take that many color pictures back then but I really love this one. One day I'm going to eventually do my Nirvana book and I'd love the whole book to be black and white except to use this one as the frontispiece. It really sums up the energy dynamics of a Nirvana show. It [has] this random, almost electrical, sparking going on. Someone else's flash went off so you see ghost images. Kurt's doing his pacing back and forth with his back to the audience, which he did a lot of. And then with the beer can down in front, that's Mark arm [of Mudhoney]. With the blonde dreads that's Joe Newton from Gas Huffer."
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Nirvana's Alternative Press magazine cover shoot, 1993
"What I like about this is the fact that you see all of the artifice and you see how low rent it is. There's a mop, which is kind of a great reference to the 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' [video] when the janitor is dancing with the mop. [Eventually] the band started to flag. Kurt especially was tired. They had to do other photo shoots after this one. Kurt, God bless him, at the end of the couple hours was like, 'Are you sure you got enough. We can take some more?' I should have taken him up on it. But this is my favorite photo from the day. They do look happy. They do look like a unit. They look like a band. I didn't dig it up until recently."
