Good things come to those who wait and adventure into an abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Berlin. At least I’m pretty sure that’s the saying. Either way, thanks to a random sequence of events, I was able to realize my dream of being a concert photographer while on my photojournalism study abroad in Berlin, and it was truly life-changing.
An empty email inbox and a ticking clock can cause miracles to happen. I had been having immense difficulty finding a musician who wanted to be my subject for the final project here on the trip. We needed to each find someone to take photos of throughout their day-to-day lives and conduct an interview with them. However, I luckily found a street performer who I had started to work with when I received an email from someone else I had messaged in a shotgun spray of requests I had sent out earlier in the trip. Stephen Paul Taylor, a performer with the physical characteristics of Ziggy Stardust but the musical style of the techno/electro-pop that Berlin is famous for, sent me an email and opened the door for me to music photography.
https://stephenpaultaylor.net/
While I had to regretfully say that I had found a different subject, Stephen replied enthusiastically that he’d be happy for me to come to his show anyway, and that he would put me on the guest list so that I could get in for free and take photos of all the bands. That’s how I found myself on the third floor of an abandoned warehouse-turned-concert venue on, fittingly, Frank Zappa Strasse to photograph my first concert.
In a space no bigger than a living room on the left-side of a graffiti filled hallway, I found the location for the Backdoor Party concert. Curtains blacked out the windows of a room filled with around thirty concert goers that met my curious and awestruck gaze with a variety of quizzical, welcoming, and often times glazed over, glances back. After putting down my backpack and carving out my spot right next to the small stage that was only elevated by a small step, I waited for the first of the eclectic mix of bands to kick off the night. The acts ranged from a Celtic-influenced, somewhat cultish rock band, to an Evanescence-like metal band, to two classic punk bands that could have easily opened at CGBG’s and finally my David Bowie-esque sponsor, Stephen Paul Taylor.
http://backdoorparty.de/parties
My dream of being a tour photographer was being realized as I ran around the room and took thousands of pictures of all the bands while frantically switching lenses and constantly trying to make the most out of the sporadic lighting that flickered around the stage. The night fully turned to the surreal as I gradually asked for and received the emails of each band as they simply walked off the stage and sat, one after the other, at the bar right next to my make-shift set-up. I then completely ascended into an excited blur of a human being when the best band of the night, Sticky Dirt, asked if there was a photographer in the room. I jumped up and waved my hand and was then brought on to the stage and sat behind the drum kit to take a picture of the band and the entire crowd. It’s without exaggeration that I say the whole night was an actual dream come true. I feel as if a fog has cleared in my brain and I have become laser-focused on making photography what I do for the rest of my life. I can sense that no matter where I go in the world, I will be home with a camera in my hand. To steal a bit from John Lennon, I may have been born in Florida, but I grew up in Berlin.