‘In the wake of death, Courtney Love was giving it her all’: Hole’s Melissa auf der Maur on her best photograph
‘This is Courtney doing her makeup on the ’95 Lollapalooza tour. I was documenting my generation being hijacked by corporate greed – and destroyed following the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain’
When I was going through the archives for my rock photo book, I came across my first ever self-portrait, at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, in front of Jim Morrison’s grave. I am a 13-year-old on an awkward trip with my cool father. He had no respect or interest in Jim Morrison, and that photo is like every photo I’ve taken from that moment on – I’m trying to take agency over what is happening. Photography was the absolute first thing that gave me a feeling of having my own say. It became a way of creating my own universe, one that I could trust. It was absolutely my first love.
I was sidetracked into music in a beautiful way by these radical women and a countercultural movement, so the subject of my photographs just changed. It was me within this environment, on stage with Hole, backstage with these luminary, wild people, travelling across the world. My photography followed and morphed with me, and my camera documented my generation being hijacked by corporate greed and destroyed in the wake of the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain. It was a generational call to document the Lollapalooza ’95 tour, where this photo was taken, for us to understand later. It was also when the wild alternative freaks crossed into the mainstream.
