A collection of Los Angeles punk photographs that sat in a closet for more than four decades is now being published for the first time. Shot As A Teen, out Saturday, Nov. 14, through Trust Records and Kill Your Idols Books, features photos taken by Dina Douglass between 1981 and 1985, when she was a teenager. The images capture the bands, fans and underground culture of the city’s punk, goth and hardcore scenes.
The 250-page book includes never-before-published photographs of more than 60 bands, among them Black Flag, Social Distortion, The Adicts, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Exploited, Circle Jerks, Minor Threat and The Misfits. Forty pages are devoted to fans and crowds, showing the faces and fashion of the young outsiders who filled the venues. Douglass, who was part of that world herself, was as interested in them as in the musicians onstage.
Douglass began photographing the scene at 16, attending shows across Los Angeles with a Canon AE-1 camera. She developed her film and made prints in her school darkroom, then tucked the negatives away in her childhood bedroom closet. Decades later, she began bringing the archive to light, a process that involved thousands of hours of image restoration and careful research into names, dates, and venues.
“There were only a handful of people shooting punk at the time, which is why these images have such a huge scarcity factor,” Douglass said. “I had no idea that I’d created such a rare and far-reaching archive, and I now feel a deep sense of responsibility for the ongoing preservation of this history.”
Trust Records and Kill Your Idols Books will host a public launch party and book signing with Douglass on Saturday, Nov. 14, at Beyond the Streets, 434 N. La Brea Ave., in Los Angeles. Fans can meet Douglass, and the Trade Edition and a limited number of Deluxe Editions will be available for purchase on-site.
The book comes in two formats. The Trade Edition features a black-and-white image of Wattie Buchan of The Exploited on the dust jacket. The Deluxe Edition has an alternate dust jacket with a full-color image of Keith “Monkey” Warren of The Adicts, plus a photographic print signed and numbered by Douglass. Both editions are available exclusively from Trust Records.
The Deluxe Edition is limited to five versions of 50 copies each, with prints of Warren, Buchan, Jerry Only of The Misfits, Mike Ness of Social Distortion, and Discharge fans.
After leaving the punk scene, Douglass earned degrees in journalism and liberal studies from Fresno State and worked at I.R.S. Records and Doctor Dream Records. She later worked in corporate consulting and technology before launching her own event photography studio, and she has been a full-time professional photographer since 2002. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, the Los Angeles Times, Paste, and Popular Photography, among other publications.
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