History rarely announces itself in the making. Sometimes, it takes shape in a dimly lit club, between the crack of a snare drum and the sweaty communion of bodies pressed against the stage. Armed with a Nikon camera, Naomi Petersen recognized those moments with an almost clairvoyant eye.
Assembled by her brother Christopher Petersen, Shot at the Speed of Sound conjures yesterday’s freaks through photographs spanning 1982 to 1994. This belated collection enshrines punk’s emerging vanguard in their most unvarnished moments, when the music was still a labor of love and longevity was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.
Naomi was only 15 years old when she was baptized in distortion after watching the Clash perform. She initiated herself into the scene that same night, and the journal entry documenting that life-changing decision even appears in the book: “I’ll never forget this night — the night I became a PUNK ROCKER!”
She was photographing for SST Records by 18, with everyone from Black Flag to Minutemen to Descendents passing through her lens. Her portfolio continued to expand as she went on to shoot the likes of Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Misfits, Sonic Youth, Nirvana and NOFX.
Many of them were still operating on the fringes, playing to small crowds and surviving on little more than conviction. What makes her pictures such a thrill is that they offer a glimpse of tomorrow’s icons still inhabiting yesterday’s obscurity, unaware of and seemingly indifferent to the mythology that would eventually eclipse their humble beginnings.
“It is easy to pick out a Naomi photograph,” Henry Rollins remembers in his brief editorial contribution. “The subjects don’t have their guard up.”
A native punk who moved through the commotion with complicity, she knew better than to intrude upon her muses’ unrehearsed selves. Just like that, she had them on her side.
About halfway through the retrospective, Thurston Moore reflects on how experimentation and liberation were essentially the yin and yang of the underground circuit that raised them both. To him, Naomi was as much a part of that world as the musicians who soundtracked it.
“Our ambitions were defined by the inspirations we shared from one club to another, from town to town, the communities of subculture growing together, out of our teens into our twenties and mysteriously beyond,” he writes. “All of a sudden, she was there and her story was no different than any one of our own — we were emancipated, escaped into the realm of a new family life ordained by love as noise.”
That sense of belonging wasn’t confined to any one address. The four chronological sections of Shot at the Speed of Sound trace her journey from Los Angeles to Washington DC, where she worked at the hallowed 9:30 Club after relocating in 1989.
It’s a shame how consistently unforgiving the music business is to those who keep its pulse beating.
For all the life Naomi helped preserve, her own was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Christopher recounts her struggles with substance abuse and depression in the introduction, prefacing her life’s work with a poignant reminder of the fragility behind its brilliance. Years of unpaid assignments and broken promises ultimately left her drained, and she walked away from her photography career in 1994.
Less than a decade later, she passed away at the age of 38.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to her more,” Christopher writes. “If only I could talk and laugh with her now, there’s so much we could share together. That is the lesson I have learned: do not wait.”
Ten years after his sister’s passing, he was finally ready for a reunion. Sifting through more than 40,000 photographs, he began retracing Naomi’s footsteps. He ultimately managed to decipher and piece together a legacy encoded in negatives, journal entries and the memories of those she touched.
Shot at the Speed of Sound is the culmination of that reverence, a lovingly assembled monument to an unsung punk icon whose images have outlived the passing moments they immortalized. In giving Naomi’s work a permanent home, Christopher found a way to keep her company long after their last goodbye. That, perhaps, is the book’s greatest achievement: pages filled with noise that ultimately tell a quieter story of a brother’s enduring love.
Shot at the Speed of Sound by Naomi Petersen
