Exhibitions
Synonymous with the sounds, styles, movement, and attitude known as “grunge,” Peterson’s artful and organic photographs hold the spirit of the 90s Northwest music scene in a visceral, timeless present. This first museum exhibition on the West Coast dedicated to Peterson’s work is based on a book of the same name. Both reflect years of editing to arrive at a selection of both iconic and never-before-seen photographs.
In this exhibition, Michelle Dunn Marsh of Minor Matters merges a selection of Peterson’s gelatin-silver and pigment prints with photographs, sculpture and video by six artists including Sylvia Plachy, Nicholas Galanin, Jeffry Mitchell, and Peterson’s photography professor, Paul Berger, among others to draw out visual and contextual nuances of Peterson’s photographs.
Charles Peterson (b.1964, Longview, Washington) is internationally known for his photographs of the Seattle music scene of the late ‘80s and ’90s. He began making photographs while a student at Bothell High School, and then went on to study photography at the University of Washington, where he first met as friends many of his future subjects. Peterson’s distinct visual style and early work for Sub Pop Records became an important signifier of the phenomenon known as Grunge. His photographs have been featured in numerous publications, as well as exhibited in group and solo exhibitions around the world. They are included in many private collections and the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum and MoPOP. Previous books include Screaming Life (Harper Collins, 1996) Pearl Jam: Place Date (Rizzoli/Ten, 1998), Touch Me I’m Sick, Cypher (powerhouse, 2003, 2008), and Genius (Frye Art Museum, 2015). He lives in Seattle with his family.
About Minor Matters: Founded in Seattle in 2013 by Michelle Dunn Marsh and Steve McIntyre, Minor Matters is a collaborative publishing platform producing exquisite art books. Their audience engagement model has resulted in “first books” for over 10 authors, with half of their monographs featuring practitioners from the West Coast of the United States. Minor Matters publications have been featured on The New York Times Lensblog, the New Yorker Photo Booth, NPR, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone online, and other channels of knowledge and culture. Publications are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library, the Getty Research Institute, the Seattle Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others.