Identity Parade – Photos by Kristofer Pasanen

The 5th Columnist, c/o Combat Rock Industry, Box 139, 00131 Helsinki Finland

I suppose some of you will remember the photobook we did some years ago – „Got to land somewhere“. It is a book featuring photos by Anne Ullrich with comments from Lee Hollis – from a area ca. 85 to 95. Identity Parade could be seen as a kinda episode, at least from the timeframe it features, 95 – 01. Only 2 bands are featured in IP that are also in Gtls – so you can tell it is from a different area. As well as from a different country, most of the photos are taken in Sweden or Finland, alot of the bands are from Scandinavia or the Usa, most of them are male.

There is more then 150 bands featured with even more photos, all pix are black and white, a mixture of some „arty“ (that are usually dissapointing to me, since I dont like photos that style) photography as well as photos where you can see who is on there, mostly live/stage shots that are great to look at. The book itself is of great quality, boardbound 2-colour cover, nice paper (ca. 150 pages). „Coffeetable book“ is the official name for books like this. Most of the photos are accompanied with text by the photographer.

The author mainly writes down his memorys of the show, or experiences with the band shown. That is sometimes interesting, almost all the time nice and here and there I do miss some critical words, since he also features some macho-dumbo bands. Apart from that, his writing seems pretty „emo“, filled with exitement and happyness for beeing a part of a scene – that in Sweden seems to be seperated in different „schools“. Alot of the bands are completly unknown to me, which is good! But I also do recognize some faces, dont get me wrong.

There is some more text by different persons dealing with „identity“. For me it is not easy to identify with the book, which is natural, since the photos where taken in Scandinavia and I dont know alot of the bands. (or dont think to high of them…) I also have the feeling that Pasanen writings show me some sort of generation „gap“. That is not meant to sound negative or indicating I have a problem – I was glad to read the book and look at the photos. I know alot of work did go in this one and it is worth its price. If you dig live-photos this is a must! (dolf)

www.uiah.fi/kpasanen

[Trust # 95 August 2002]