What follows is Maximum Rock and Roll's interview with Larry Wolfley for their sold out February 2010 Photo Issue.
What brought you to photography in the beginning? Give a small biography please.
Can you please tell us the story of how you became involved in the punk scene? What was the year that you started shooting punks?
Most of my growing up was in small towns in rural Illinois, though my very first memories were of living in downtown Chicago during the second world war. I went to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, then came to California to go to grad school at Berkeley, where I received my PhD in English. From '68 to '78, I taught English lit at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Then I left the academic world, returned to Berkeley, and worked as a carpenter and contractor. I think my years of teaching kids in their late teens and early twenties gave me a feel for relating to that age group and feeling natural around them. While at Nebraska I shot a lot of slides of my friends and of events, but only for the record. I had little interest, at that time, in photography as art.
After my son was born in '89, I tried taking pictures of him, and realized I really knew nothing about photography. And it came to me that I wanted to know what I didn't know. So in '91 I started a program of self teaching. I needed a big subject to practice on, and since I lived near Telegraph Avenue, I started walking up there at the end of every day, and every chance I got, and photographing the street regulars, mostly the young. I spent a lot of time just hanging out with them. I put some of my early snapshots up in coffee houses after people started getting to know me. Soon I was involved in a self-assigned project to document the street kids I got to know around Telegraph.
After my son was born in '89, I tried taking pictures of him, and realized I really knew nothing about photography. And it came to me that I wanted to know what I didn't know. So in '91 I started a program of self teaching. I needed a big subject to practice on, and since I lived near Telegraph Avenue, I started walking up there at the end of every day, and every chance I got, and photographing the street regulars, mostly the young. I spent a lot of time just hanging out with them. I put some of my early snapshots up in coffee houses after people started getting to know me. Soon I was involved in a self-assigned project to document the street kids I got to know around Telegraph.
In '94 a kid told me that if I wanted to know their culture I had to go to Gilman and learn how central music was to the scene. So I started going there on a regular basis. At that time Chris Sparks was head co-ordinator, and he was going with Sita Rupe. Sita wanted to use the darkroom I had made to teach herself photography, and she and I started that wall inside the front door where I still put up my 8X10 b&w prints. (Sita has gone on to become a successful east bay artist.)
What keeps you going? You have been taking pictures of shows and punks for well over a decade? Do you consider yourself part of the scene or just a documenter of a hardcore lifestyle? Have any of your subjects become personal friends? Are you interested in the music?
I think what keeps me going right now is a desire to pull together all the loose ends and find closure for all the major trains of thought before health problems, or just some personal decision, causes me to hang it up and retire. I mean, I have to stop doing this some time, and believe me, I think about it. After all, after the year 2000 I completely stopped shooting on the street. That body of work still exists, and I want to do a book of it, but I don't want to do that kind of shooting again. Same with what I'm doing now, the shows and underground house parties, etc. Some day I'll say "enough, I quit."
I am a part of the scene, I can't help it. I also document from an outsider's perspective. I have one foot in and one foot outside the scene. I have had to make a living, and that part of my life is very conventional. I consider almost all my subjects personal friends. At one point in my street shooting career I pretty much stopped shooting people I didn't know. I think if I still have artistic growth in front of me, it is in the area of candids of the many people I have known for years and years.
But the people I know don't come to where I live very much, and I don't visit them where they live very much. This is partly a holdover from my last, recently ended, marriage. My wife thought my friends were "evil" (maybe she was right in some cases!) and got nervous as hell if any of them showed up at the door. Honestly, I wish I visited more.
I like the music, but my preference is strongly for crust and metal in all its local varieties. Eldopa had a powerful influence on me; my annual birthday shows tend toward bands that are similar. But you and I know there is a lot of bad punk music. Personally, stuff like thrash and hardcore leave me kind of cold, but I follow all that, and more, for the energy and vitality displayed. Pure energy is one of my constant themes, I think. To me, it means life, action, being alive.