Melissa Auf Der Maur: My 90s Photographs

From alt-rock bassist Melissa Auf der Maur-of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins fame-comes a photographic love letter to the last analog decade

Published with Art Gallery of Ontario.

As the bass player for the iconic '90s alternative rock bands Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa Auf der Maur toured the world, documenting life backstage, onstage and in the crowd. She instinctively turned the camera on herself as the most intimately available subject, as informed by her studies at Concordia University where her professor, Raymonde April, introduced her to the subjective self-portraits of Francesca Woodman. By the time she joined Hole for their Live Through This world tour, she requested a roll of 35mm film backstage at every venue. Her daily practice, continually documenting herself and her surroundings, expanded through her creative uses of self-timers and cable releases to take snapshots in the middle of performances. This dedication resulted in an extensive archive of over 10,000 photographs that go behind the scenes of rock-and-roll stardom-playing with Courtney Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain; hanging out with Pavement, Sonic Youth and Beck; riding in the back of a limousine with Drew Barrymore; and idling time on the set of the music video for Hole's song "Celebrity Skin." She was even commissioned by magazines such as Spin to document Lollapalooza 1995 and the Tibetan Freedom Concert of 1996. Gritty and edgy, playful yet deeply personal, Auf der Maur's intimate photographs celebrate the independent spirit of the '90s and offer an insider's view of the decade before smartphones and digital recording software. Through an extensive curatorial selection of more than 200 photographs, her memories create a moving self-portrait of a young artist living through the '90s alternative music scene, and a time capsule for Generation X.
Melissa Auf der Maur's (born 1972) indie band Tinker had just opened for Smashing Pumpkins when Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love as the new bassist for Hole's grief-marked Live Through This world tour, beginning soon after the deaths of both Kurt Cobain and Kristen Pfaff. She played on the group's Grammy-nominated album Celebrity Skin. After leaving Hole, Auf der Maur joined Smashing Pumpkins as the bassist for their farewell tour from 1999 to 2000. Following the release of a few solo albums, she moved to Hudson, NY, became a mother and cofounded the multidisciplinary art center Basilica Hudson.