thoughts of yesterday

Radiohead 1995 (c) Laura Mendes

The story behind this shoot appeared in Told Shots. Anagram 2025.

“I photographed Radiohead in the 90s. It was a magnetic and delirious session in which I decided to go for controlled error.

The plan was to photograph them on the rooftop of a luxury hotel. Needless to say, the more famous the subject, the less time you have to take the photo and the more insects are buzzing around them. The five musicians were at the peak of their success, and the pressure on my shoulders to get it right was palpable.

I opted to use a lens that had survived a recent fall, knowing it would be a challenge. I was fascinated by how it produced aberrations and blurred the corners—that technical flaw.

It gave the photos a dreamlike quality, but I needed to achieve a very precise composition to avoid blurring the subjects. As if that weren't enough tension, the sun was forcing the band's frontman to pose He squinted his left eye—I was unaware he had a chronic problem—and I insisted he open his eyes and look at the camera. Thom Yorke, besides showing patience and kindness in the face of my clumsiness, had a unique air of mystery, and he moved like a cat.

In an attempt to use English slang to disguise my insecurity, I tried telling them to let their hair down and not pose too much. I decided to use the expression "Let your hair down," which I imagined would be the most shocking. After hearing me—I think they understood "lie down"—they threw themselves to the ground. From then on, the confusion only worsened: after my next instruction—I don't remember what I said, but I certainly wasn't clear—they got into the pool fully clothed, which forced me to get in the water too and keep shooting with the camera and the cables connected to a huge flash.

Using this image

Love, grief, and magic in the mundane

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.