- Hardcover: 176 pages
- Published: 6/4/19
- IBSN: 9781617757198
- Genre: Art/Music/Pop Culture, Nonfiction
Catalog » Browse by Title: F » Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essays from Washington, DC, and Beyond, 1997–2017
A long-overdue female-centric perspective on underground rock music, featuring photos by Tricarico and essays by Joan Jett, Amy Farina, Allison Wolfe, Donita Sparks, and more!
“Whether hanging out with musicians between sets or pressing up against the stage while they play, Tricarico seeks intimacy as well as energy.”
—Washington Post
“There’s no shortage of visual documentation of Washington’s punk scene over the years, but Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essays from Washington, DC, and Beyond, 1997–2017, a new book out next week by the photographer Antonia Tricarico, evokes a lot more than memories of sweaty nights at Fort Reno. There are photos of those occasions (and they’re uniformly great) but in an introductory essay, Tricarico writes that ‘since the majority of the writing in music books has been done by men, I wanted to highlight the voices of women.’ So Frame of Mind intersperses essays from artists including Allison Wolfe (Bratmobile, Cold Cold Hearts, Sex Stains), Amy Pickering (Fire Party), and Joan Jett among arresting photos of live shows and candid offstage moments.”
—Washingtonian Magazine
“Plenty of documentaries, books and zines tell the stories of DC punk from the perspective of men. But why aren’t more women involved in the conversation? The question struck local photographer Antonia Tricarico as she was compiling her first book . . . Concert photos in the book feature seminal local acts including Fugazi, Deep Lust and Priests, along with bigger touring names such as Joan Jett. Many of the photos were taken at DC-area venues, though some were shot in places around the world (including Tricarico’s home country of Italy). Adding a personal touch are the 14 essays from punk’s trailblazing women—including Jett and Kristina Sauvage of Coup Sauvage & the Snips.”
—Washington Post Express
“Antonia Tricarico[’s] . . . female-centric new book Frame of Mind features photographs she made at punk shows in DC and beyond from 1997 to 2017 as well as essays by women such as Joan Jett, Amy Farina, Allison Wolfe, and others.”
—DCist
“In Frame of Mind, photographer Antonia Tricarico collects her best shots from 1997 to 2017, centered on the DC scene. She particularly spotlights women artists: Babes in Toyland, Joan Jett, Sleater-Kinney, Patti Smith, the Gossip, and many more.”
—The Current’s Rock and Roll Book Club (Minnesota Public Radio)
“The photos are exciting by virtue of seeming very present, and Tricarico’s decision to give some of these women a full page of their own to say something about their lives in rock ‘n’ roll is a necessary and priceless undertaking that adds tremendous value to Frame of Mind as a punk subcultural artifact . . . [Tricarico] captures not just a spirit of the times, but a spirit that is for all times. It’s a punk thing to do, to show us that these bands may go down but the spirit of the underground carries on with each musician, nonetheless.”
—PopMatters
Included in BookAuthority’s 39 Best Punk Music Books of All Time!
“[Tricarico’s] ability to take a wide range of musicians in various experiences and both show their energy and their humanity really makes these pages shine. The additional focus on women musicians both in photos and essays makes this one a keeper.”
—Razorcake
“Having been steeped in the punk scene in Rome, Tricarico used her camera as a way to connect with kindred spirits in a new language. In the process, she filmed a who’s who of the scene and those who came to play in DC: Ian MacKaye, Joan Jett, Alice Bag, Allison Wolfe, Donita Sparks and many more. Her new book, Frame of Mind, contains 200 photographs from this vast archive, with stories provided by many of the subjects.”
—Please Kill Me
“There are plenty of photo projects covering the history of DC’s underground music scene, but many of them are incomplete in one specific—and perhaps unsurprising—way. Women have been involved in this community from the start: playing in bands, making zines, shooting photos. Only recently, however, have their perspective come to the forefront. Photographer Antonia Tricarico moved to Washington DC from Italy in 1997 and quickly started documenting the underground music communities around her which included iconic bands like Fugazi, The Make Up, and Branch Manager.”
—Popular Photography
“Featuring essays by queer artists such as Joan Jett, Allison Wolfe, and Tara Jane O’Neil, among others, Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essays from Washington, DC, and Beyond, 1997–2017 is a cool coffee table book by Antonia Tricarico, containing pics of The Gossip, The Julie Ruin, and many others.”
—Baltimore Out Loud
“The women featured in Frame of Mind, the USWNT, and countless others are bucking the norm that to be celebrated as a woman, you have to be gracious and humble and beautiful and kind and a million other things. They are standing up with confidence in their skills and in themselves and demanding the equality authorities at all levels fail to give them. If that’s not punk, I don’t know what is.”
—Rhythm Reload Magazine
“Using 200 pictures taken from a variety of venues including New York, Rome and Washington, DC, Tricarico has not only preserved this musical era for the visual record, she has captured its very heart and soul. Working largely in black and white, her photos capture bands at work, play, hanging out, and most importantly onstage. Collected together they give readers a look at the microcosm of punk influenced music of the late 1990s.”
—Target Audience Magazine
“It was about time a book like this got published; if you like female musicians, photo books, DC and punk—this is for you.”
—Trust Fanzine (Germany)
“Unique and highly recommended.”
—Midwest Book Review
“In the late 1990s in Washington, DC, a seminal era in underground music was born, and photographer Antonia Tricarico was steeped in it. Tricarico chronicled its musicians, women and men alike, with her powerful and evocative photos, which are collected here in Frame of Mind.”
—Brooklyn Digest
“A beautiful and welcomed addition to the library of titles already out there about harDCore . . . Supremely emphatic and entirely exciting, the photographs of Antonia Tricarico in Frame of Mind are as vitally important to documenting the continuing harDCore scene as those of earlier artists like Jim Saah and Malcolm Riviera. Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essays from Washington, DC, and Beyond, 1997–2017 does her work justice in a sturdy and lovely book, the rare coffee-table book that’s actually got things worth reading in it too.”
—A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed
In the late 1990s bands like Fugazi, Branch Manager, the Make-Up, Deep Lust, Quix*o*tic, Lungfish, Spirit Caravan, Scaramouche, Stinking Lizaveta, and many more were active in and around the underground music scene in Washington, DC. While those bands went on a hiatus or dissolved over the years, others inspired by them have formed, including Dead Meadow, Motorcycle Wars, the Evens, and Weird War. In Frame of Mind, all of these groups appear in over 200 powerful and evocative photos by Antonia Tricarico.
In addition to DC’s homegrown offerings, Frame of Mind also features photos of other seminal and like-minded groups that passed through the city, such as the Melvins, the Ex (from the Netherlands), Uzeda (from Italy), Joan Jett, Shellac, Babes in Toyland, the Julie Ruin, L7, and Alice Bag.
Frame of Mind captures underground music through both photos and essays. While the photos include musicians of all genders, the essays are all written by women: Joan Jett, Amy Farina, Tara Jane O’Neil, Alice Bag, Allison Wolfe, Donita Sparks, Lori Barbero, and more. If women are the underground of the underground, let this book be a wake-up call for future generations to start their own awe-inspiring bands.
Read event previews at DCist, Washington Post, and Washingtonian Magazine.
Read a feature/Q&A with Antonia Tricarico at Popular Photography.
Read a Q&A with Antonia Tricarico at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival blog.
Read an interview/feature on Antonia Tricarico at Please Kill Me.
Listen to an interview with Antonia Tricarico, Natalie Avery, and Lely Constantinople at the Kojo Nnamdi Show (WAMU 88.6 FM Washington, DC).
Antonia Tricarico has been taking photos since 1997. She worked as a photo archivist for Lucian Perkins (a Washington Post Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer) and has collaborated with Tolotta Records, Dischord Records, Kill Rock Stars, and Youth Action Research Group. Her work can be found in private collections; in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History; the People’s Archive in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC; the Special Collections in Performing Arts in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, University of Maryland; and the Collections of DC History Center, Washington, DC. Her photos have appeared in Photo Review, Guitar World, Kerrang!, All Music, Chicago Reader, the Oregonian, Razorcake, the Quietus, and Fretboard Journal. She is the creator of Frame of Mind: Punk Photos and Essays from Washington, DC, and Beyond, 1997–2017, also available from Akashic Books.