For The Love Of The Scene

Photographs by Joshua Stein

Photographer Joshua Stein talks about the small yet passionate underground rock scene in Cape Town, South Africa, the importance of aesthetics in an image, and being more than just a live music photographer.

Capetown, South Africa

What's your history as a photographer?

I started photography in 2016 when I specialized in photojournalism as part of my journalism degree. So my background in photography is based in a more documentary style. The first kinds of things that I photographed were more news and documentary orientated. I was influenced by people like Steve McCurry and so that informed my photographic beginning. When did I start calling myself a photographer? Haha, I’m not sure I call myself one now. I kind of struggle to take myself seriously.

Why do you like shooting music and musicians? How does it make you feel? How did you get into shooting music?

I have always been really into music and so when I started photography it seemed natural to combine the two. You shoot what interests you, you know? It seriously got going once I just started taking my camera with me to every gig I went to. I just started building up a body of work naturally by just being a fan and having a camera. I think a lot of the photography that I do is for the love of the scene. I like the idea of being able to look back on these photos of this little scene that only a handful of people knew, that was part of my life in the place I was when I was this age.

Shooting music and musicians can be a really interesting experience. Some people have an energy on stage that is really captivating and I have found myself sometimes totally entranced by certain characters on stage. Moreover, really good live music is very emotional and so it brings a lot out of people which is really cool to capture.

How would you describe your shooting style? What makes it different from other music photographers?

As for my shooting style, I see it in more or less two categories. The first is really strong, formal compositions using really high contrast.I am really influenced by graphic design and photographers who draw on it such as Arnold Newman. When I am looking at the image I kind of abstract it into shapes and forms and thing about how they fit together in a way that I find aesthetically pleasing. The second is photos that try to just be raw and capture a particular moment. More sort of immersive and less compositionally strict. Ideally, with my photos, you would be able to feel the heat and energy of that scene as i felt it when i was there.

It’s really important to me that my photos are good because they are good photographs not just because they are of something cool. I really don’t like photos that get by just by being of someone or something really cool. That photo of Jimmy Page or whoever is rad but because that person is so cool. As a photograph, its fine. There needs to be justification for the photographic medium. The photograph itself needs to be doing some aesthetic work that separates it from any other medium or just looking at it in real life. I often think with photos ‘would I be ok putting this on my wall and looking at it every day?’. Is it a good photo or is that person just cool? Haha but how much of all these ideas come through vary in each image and some represent the different aspects more than others.

What's the story behind your favorite image?

Ok favorite image is hard but I’m gonna try. Haha probably one of my favorite images that speaks to what I have said as well is not it what I sent you. The band is Italian so I thought not strictly Cape Town. From what I have sent you I am gonna go with…Oh god I can’t decide. Ok ok, so I would not say this is my favourite photo but it has a better story about it i guess.

So this is a picture of Neil from PXLS. I took this photo earlier this year, which is crazy I can't believe I was doing this in February. It was at the second last night out before lockdown in South Africa. I was not supposed to be taking photos of this event but I got sort of embarrassed/awkawrded into it. A local publication asked me ages ago if I would take photos at this event and I said I did not really want to but I would have my camera on me anyway. To me, this meant if I get some cool pictures I will send them to you but I’m not working or anything ( so no pressure for me ). Then I get a message the day before asking if I am still keen and I was like shit it’s the day before I can’t let them down and was just to shy to say no haha. I fucking hated photographing this event. I just wanted to party but now I had responsibilities and it was so fucking hot in this club. My eyes were stinging from sweat and i was just not in the fucking mood to deal with this. So it was a miserable experience photographing but then the photos I got from it actually turned out really well and I was super pleased with the results despite hating it the whole time.

Tell me about the rock music scene in Cape Town. What are some notable bands, venues, shows? What makes this scene unique and special?

So Cape Town has a few different music scenes and most are unknown to me. I just kind of gravitate to music that I like and so that naturally takes me to the more kind of rock/psych/alt whatever scene. Using those genre terms pretty loosely here. I wanted to explore more scenes in Cape Town in 2020 but guess not.

Anyway, this scene is pretty small. It’s quite a niche thing here based around a few venues in the city. What I think is really cool about it is how much of it is driven by passion and love for the music. There is really not all that much money in it but people are always keen and so something is always happening which i think is really cool.

I think the high point of the scene is this music festival called Endless Daze, which of course was cancelled this year *sheds a single tear*. Its a pretty small thing with only one main stage and a small B stage but a lot of these bands in the scene play there at some point and there are always cool international acts that pull through. Part of what is really cool about it is what I was saying about there aways being people keen. There is this group/collective/whatever called Pysch Night who threw gigs and stuff in Cape Town and they basically just started this music festival. So yeah, love that DIY attitude.

Local bands I like :

Spotify Playlist of local bands: local

The main venues in Cape Town are EVOL and The Mercury. Unfortunately, we lost Mercury during the lockdown. These places often had really good shows and I have some amazing times there. In fact, most of the photos I sent you were probably taken at these two places. Mercury was great because it was the most professional of the small venues with the proper equipment and a good stage so a band could really shine there and it was were international indie bands would play. EVOL is great because its just filthy and grimy in all the right ways. Really shit small ground-level stage that makes for really engaging and energetic performances because the band is right there with the crowd. In my opinion, those are the main places but of course there are more venues in Cape Town playing a vide variety of music that maybe in 2021 i will get to check out.

How has the global pandemic affected this scene? How has it affected your photography?

The pandemic. Oof. The first casualty was The Merucry which has just been a staple in the scene for so long. So losing that was tragic. A few bands have ended in the lockdown which also sucks. Its been hard, as it has been for everyone. A lot of people needed those events for income so some people are struggling. There have been a few live streams, especially in the early days of lockdown but I’m not totally sold on them. There are a few tentative gigs happening in Cape Town now that that lockdown has calmed down a bit. But yeah its the same story here as in most other places I guess. I would kill for another gig without having to worry about the plague.

As for my photography, obviously there are no live events to photograph. I tried photographing a live stream but it was meh ( the band was cool but the photos were meh ). Something I did in lockdown that I am quite happy with is a produced a zine called Shadowplay which featured a selection of my black and white band photography. It went really well and I hope to do more soon. Already planning volume 2 haha.

What’s next for you?

I would like to move away from love photography actually. I feel like I have done so much of it and it kinds of annoys me that some people know if as “a live band photographer”. I don’t think of myself as that. So what I would like to do is more shoots with bands and artists. I worked with a band Runaway Nuns recently and shot their latest album cover and so doing more stuff like that would be ideal. Keeping my foot in the music scene but moving away from just events.