Shot at the Speed of Sound: The Photography of Naomi Petersen

Naomi Petersen was barely eighteen when SST Records made her their house photographer, and she spent the next twelve years shooting the American underground from inside it. Black Flag, Minor Threat, Misfits, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks, Descendents, The Minutemen, and some of the earliest known frames of Guns N' Roses, Nirvana, Dave Grohl, Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Pantera. In 1989 she moved from LA to DC and kept shooting out of the 9:30 Club. Then in 1994 she put the camera down, and most of it went into boxes.

Shot at the Speed of Sound is the first printed collection of that archive, pulled from negatives almost nobody has seen. The title is Naomi's own: she wrote it in a journal on November 26, 1985, years before there was a book to put it on. "Oh, had another idea for a photo book: to call it 'Shot at the Speed of Sound' and only have live shots in it." Naomi passed in 2003 at 38 and never got to see what these pictures became.

The praise

“When you look over her incredibly prolific body of work and the powerful quality of it, you appreciate her all the more.”

Henry Rollins

“Naomi was a tenacious photographer and, as a result, created a goldmine of images.”

Ian MacKaye

“She had a great compositional eye and understood what would make her pictures read in print.”

Chuck Dukowski