Sonic Youth - Wonderbread

Naomi Petersen

In the early 1980s, at barely 18 years old, Japanese-American female Naomi Petersen got her hard and fast start as the resident photographer for Los Angeles independent label, SST Records. From 1982-1994, Naomi would capture one-of-a-kind images of legends like Punk greats Black Flag, Minor Threat, Misfits, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks, Descendents, and The Minutemen as well as some of the earliest known photos of iconic Rock artists like Guns N’ Roses, Dave Grohl, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and Pantera.

Moving from LA to DC in 1989, Naomi continued documenting powerhouse artists during her time working at the legendary 9:30 Club. In 1994, after just twelve short years, Naomi shockingly retired from photography and wouldn’t take another photo until three years later, shooting her last known images.

At the May 2005 premiere of the Minutemen documentary, We Jam Econo, the word spread she had died two years earlier. As the writer Joe Carducci found out more about her years before and after SST, his planned e-mail death notice turned into a lengthy photo-essay for the web and now a book, Enter Naomi, which places her life, from birth in Yokohama to death thirty-eight years later in a D.C.-area motel room, in the context of the wreckless punk years she lived through.