VIA PRESS RELEASE | Features rare and unseen photos of LCD Soundsystem, Black Dice, The Juan Maclain and more plus a recent interview with The Rapture.
As the photographer Tim Soter says in the preface, “This book is for the fans. It’s for the gearheads, the photo nerds, the party people, the music historians and the completists. It’s for the guest list beggars, the friend of a friend, the plus ones and the plus nones. It’s for the artists themselves, who can expect to see a few photos they haven’t seen before. This book is for those who got turned on to DFA after the fact and of course, it’s for the ones who were there.”
After Y2K proved to not be the end of the world, youth of New York were ready for a release of anxiety in the form of more dancing, more beats and, of course, more parties. There wasn’t a camera in every pocket in the early aughts and photographers were often the only ones to document rare moments in real-time. Tim Soter is one of these few photographers. While he was shooting for Rolling Stone and other music mags back in 2003, he simply reached out to label manager Jonathan Galkin and asked, “Hey, can I photograph everyone at DFA?”
DFA: The Early Years captures a unique place and time for the studio that would ultimately give us LCD Soundsystem and presents the DFA bands in their raw beginnings. From candid Polaroids of Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy to rare band press shots, Soter uses his photography and primitive Hotmail correspondence to tell the story of DFA from 2003 to 2007.
As a storyteller and book designer, Soter wanted to create he ultimate fan book. He interviewed the Rapture capturing their anecdotal recollections form that time. He assembled a comprehensive discography covering the span of the book. He presents a visual diary for fans, taking them back to a unique time in NYC’s music history—before streaming services and before price-gouging ticket hubs.
Within these 160 pages are photos from shows at Roseland, Hammerstein, and the Bowery, parties at Tonic, Volume Club, private lofts and never-before-seen images of the founders just being kids together. The story reveals the beginning of a collective that started with the likes of The Rapture, Black Dice, The Juan MacLean, Gavilán Rayna Russom, Delia Gonzales, and, of course, LCD Soundsystem. Vivid and energetic, this is a book for fans to find themselves in the crowd and quite literally point and say, “I was there.”
Tim Soter is a photographer and book publisher operating under the imprint The Ship Escaped. He has an extensive archive of music photography which he shot from the mid-nineties through the late aughts, largely concentrated around DJs, nightlife and the indie music scene in New York City.
Soter was the house photographer for the popular NYC nightclub Twilo and photographed for music magazines like Rolling Stone, SPIN, Blender and more for over a decade. His books are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA, International Center of Photography, Tate Modern, Alec Soth collection and others. He is a professor of photography at Fashion Institute of Technology.
