February 9:
During 1980, Susie J. Horgan met Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye at her ice cream scooping job at Häagen-Dazs in Georgetown, where she was working during her first year studying photography. She began to photograph her D.C. friends who played in hardcore punk bands for class assignments and hasn’t stopped taking pictures since. If you’ve ever visited Books & Books and gazed at the long wall of author photographs that document readings, then you’ve seen Horgan’s work. She is the one snapping pictures in the back row at every important author signing Books & Books has ever organized. A prolific photographer of the social conscience, she has documented life in Cuba and Haiti and takes pictures regularly for Shake-a-Leg Miami. She continues to photograph her friends and their bands. This evening we celebrate the publication of Punk Love (Rizzoli, $25), a unique testament to the birth of D.C. hardcore. It is a raw document of the musicians inventing a new punk sound and a fan-base that absorbed it. At once intimate and authentic, definitive and iconic, Horgan’s photography seizes the youthful energy and spirit generated from this seminal period in music culture. The images in Punk Love not only reveal a sense of urgency, but also a straight-shooter collectiveness and self-respect that were the focal points of the D.C. scene. View an exhibition of photographs from the book, at the Books & Books gallery, through February 25th. Celebrate Susie and her images with us this evening.

Coral Gables Gallery Night: Susie J. Horgan – Punk Love Photographs

Celebrating music and a community bound together since 1980, Horgan’s largely unpublished images vibrate with sound and elegantly portray a scene that would capture the imaginations of thousands of kids around the country and around the world. This is Punk love. 7-10pm.