The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Rock shots

August 29th, 2008

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Rock shots

A Czech photographer nails the American music scene

By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 2nd, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

The fans can be as colorful as the performers at rock shows. Above top, a seriously good tattoo and implant job at Ozzfest; below, David Lee Roth kicks out the jams.

Rock ’n’ roll came to Brno in a big way last week with the opening of a photo exhibit by Walter Novak, a Czech expat who’s made a name for himself shooting stars in the United States. The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, U2, Marilyn Manson — rock royalty was splashed all over the walls of the Hadivadlo theater as a crowd jostled for viewing room and reporters kept pulling Novak aside for interviews.

“I don’t like someone pushing a microphone in my face,” Novak complained in a pub afterward, a common sentiment for someone used to being on the other side of the camera. But he was thrilled at the crowd, which included a former photography teacher who was near tears seeing what his student had achieved abroad.

A stage-eye view of Novak, above, who has to do battle with hordes of sweaty fans to get money shots of rock stars such as Gene Simmons of Kiss, below, and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, bottom.

Novak, 50, is originally from Brno, where he was making a living as a commercial photographer when he decided that life in the United States would offer more opportunities for the kind of work he really wanted to do. So he packed up and left in 1992, landing in Cleveland, Ohio.

But the transition was difficult. He didn’t speak English, and lost confidence in himself in his new surroundings. For a while, he did anything he could to stay alive — paint garages, push a broom, bus tables. One job was at a pub and restaurant where journalists and photographers congregate, and when they saw his work, they encouraged him to pick up a camera again. When Novak demurred, they told him, “Hey, this is America — you can be anything you want to be.

He started at a small weekly paper, shooting for free to get published and staying alive by working in a photo studio. After a few months he got a call from the art director at Cleveland Magazine, a glossy monthly, who had noticed his work and wanted to give him an assignment.

“Sure,” Novak said breezily, hanging up the phone convinced it was a prank.

On the day of his appointment, he was working at the photo studio when the phone rang. “I can still hear the owner, a Yugoslavian guy,” Novak says: “‘Wally, you got telephone!’ ” It was the art director, wanting to know where he was at. “It was insane; the guy at the best magazine in town calls me and I blow him off,” Novak says with a rueful smile.

But he hustled over and got the assignment, which led to others. Soon he was working for almost every publication in the city, though mostly under assumed names, as there was an unwritten rule about not working for competing publications. At one newspaper his credit line was Rudy Alexi, the names of the art director’s two cats.

Eventually he was discovered. An editor called him up and said, “Listen, we know it’s you working for these other places. You have to make a choice — it’s either them or us.”

But the gods of photojournalism smiled on Novak at that moment, sending a gift in the form of a job offer from Cleveland Scene, an alternative news weekly. “It was a good offer — a decent salary, a darkroom and no meetings,” he says. “Besides, I live to do editorial work.”

”

Legends of Rock 'n' Roll

Photographs by Walter Novak
When: Through May 31
Where: Hadivadlo theater, Brno (Poštovská 8, Alfa Pasáž)

Shooting in a war zone

That was in the spring of 1999, which is when I first intersected with Novak. I was the editor of Cleveland Scene then, and soon came to value his skills and moxie as a news photographer. We did a lot of stories that involved unsavory characters and subjects — a Ku Klux Klan rally, Russian mobsters, cult murders in a tony suburb, ghetto hustlers — none of which ever deterred or intimidated him. He would do whatever it took to get the photo: stake out a spot for hours, act like an ignorant immigrant, put some muscle on an unwilling subject.

Once he was sitting in his car opposite an inner-city grocery store where there was a food stamp scam under way, waiting with his camera in his lap for the ringleader to arrive. Suddenly there was a big black belly insinuating itself in the driver’s window, with the business end of a sawed-off shotgun next to it.

“What are you doing here?” a voice growled.

“Police business,” Novak snapped, then hit the gas and sped away.

“It’s a hard job,” he says. “You can get your ass kicked; you can even get killed. But if you’re sent out to get a photo, you have to come back with that photo. If you can’t do that, then you should go flip burgers. Or stay home with your girlfriend, who’s going to dump you anyway, because you’re a loser.”

Compared to that, shooting rock ’n’ roll sounds like a vacation. But in fact, it’s more like working in a war zone. The first challenge is to find a place to stand amid a jam-packed, heaving mob. Novak usually ends up in front of the speakers, where it’s too painful for anyone else. “I always wear earplugs,” he says. “But still, I have permanent damage in my right ear. And the vibrations — they shake my clothes, they’ll knock the camera right out of your hands.”

Or the fans will. It’s common to get punched, kicked and shoved by screaming fans trying to get closer to the stage. Novak got a black eye at a Slayer concert by being shoved into the stage when he had his camera up to his eye. At a recent punk concert, he managed to ignore the pounding on his back until he felt something wet and realized someone was urinating on him.

“I hit the guy with my elbow and knocked him to the floor,” Novak says. “I could take the punching, but not someone pissing on me.”

The madding crowd

For all that, rock ’n’ roll remains Novak’s first love.

“I always had photos of rock musicians like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards over my bed,” he says. “Seeing them up close now is tremendously exciting for me. I even get backstage sometimes and get to meet people like David Bowie, Sting and Ozzy Osbourne.”

And there are other benefits. At an Aerosmith concert, women who apparently thought he was with the band put their hands in his pants and started groping him while he was taking pictures. Laughing at the memory, Novak says, “I’m in heaven — I could only be happier if someone shoved a doughnut in my mouth.”

Lately Novak’s interests have turned to the fans. After hearing one too many bands scream “Hello, Detroit!” when they take the stage in Cleveland, he finds a refreshing honesty in the bedlam on the floor. “There’s no fakery — they dance, they cry, they’re very emotional,” he says. “The bands don’t even know where they’re at. They’re just playing for the money.”

There are plenty of intricate tattoos, colorful Mohawks and girls showing everything they’ve got alongside the bands in the exhibit — just like a rock show. If you’re in Brno over the next month, stop in and see what the cheering is all about.

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com

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