Pearl Jam: Place/Date

Contemporary music photography suffers from a lack of unhindered contact between photographer and subject. The musicians prefer to control the process and, while one understands that impulse (would you want to see your mug turn up in print after a bad hair day?), the result is often an excess of carefully crafted but soulless images that have everything to do with publicity photography and nothing to do with photojournalism. But with Place/Date, it's readily apparent that lensmen Charles Peterson and Lance Mercer spent plenty of unsupervised time in the company of Pearl Jam before assembling this handsome, rewarding volume. The twosome collect images dating back to the group's 1991 grunge salad days and up to 1998. Kinetic shots of the band in action (Eddie leaping, Eddie sprawling, Eddie crawling) are interspersed with backstage candids of the quintet playing dominos, napping, and killing time. In keeping with the group's egalitarian ethos, the lens is frequently turned away from Vedder and company toward PJ's fans, with telling results. --Steven Stolder