Antisocial: Early 90s Hardcore Portraits

Spending some time in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, Canada is eliciting some serious nostalgia.  The following is Part I of a two part series of portraits found in a box under the stairs in my parents’ basement. Part II, Working Class Kids: Early 90s Skinhead Portraits may be found here.

All shots were taken with a Canon AE-1. The last photo was the only not taken by me (and I have no idea who did, but it was with my Canon). I originally developed a number of these by hand.

I grew up listening to punk, hardcore, oi!, streetpunk, seminal punk….I lived in a house with three brothers, two of them being record geeks who listened to the above incessantly. I distinctly remember being at a party sometime in early highschool, someone putting on Beat On The Brat by the Ramones and a conditioned childhood anxiety creeped into my bones.  I was waiting for some sort of torture; I was waiting for one of my brothers.

The family record geek legacy continued and within time, I began to DJ the above, first on community radio in Windsor and later in bars in Toronto. I eventually sold my vinyl collection to fund my trip to train muay thai in Thailand.

Although the albums are gone and only some photos remain, there’s enough to make me feel warm and fuzzy thinking of the delinquents I grew up with.

From the archives…

The following was the first cover up attempt I remember doing. Possibly the only one. I walked into a room, this kid was lying on the floor and I was basically told if I didn’t fix up the mess on his abdomen, the other guy in the room was going to. A work of art with a homemade machine fashioned from a guitar string and a motor ripped from a tape deck.