\u201cIt was clear that I knew shit was happening,\u201d she tells me, as we look at blown-up photographs of Courtney Love and Billy Corgan, as well as a slew of other familiar faces from the era. \u201cI knew [Hole] deserved a trustworthy documentarian and our generation deserved it, too, as did our music scene. And I feel a commitment to sharing my observations of what I witnessed and what good and bad things I saw unfold due to corporate rising evil forces [and] eventually digital forces. I knew history was happening and that I was just a mere human who could never truly process what was happening unless I photographed, photographed, photographed, obsessively documenting so that I could unpack it later for others and for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
And photograph she did. While the show features a couple of hundred photographs taken between the early Nineties \u2013 when a fortuitous meeting with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan eventually led to her joining Love\u2019s band, Hole \u2013 and late 2000, when the Pumpkins, whom she later joined, disbanded, Melissa\u2019s vault is far larger. \u201cMy archive is 15,000 photographs, all printed, and then we had to scan them and reduce them to like, 200, which was the hardest thing of this entire memoir project. \u2026 I\u2019d sit on my hotel bed on a day off [in the Nineties] and just sort of, like, spread all the photos out and try to make sense of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gazing at a glamorous Drew Barrymore in the back seat of a car and a barefoot Love on a bicycle, I\u2019m curious about the timing of the show. Why now? \u201cI was about to turn 50, and my daughter was about to turn 10,\u201d she says about beginning her memoir. \u201cIt was time for me to unpack on my own that decade, which was overwhelming and exciting, but also very painful, both on a personal and on a generational level.\u201d Their release 25 years later has given her enough distance to see the period differently. \u201cI\u2019d say the perfect amount of time had passed for a cultural reflection.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the photographs certainly capture the spirit of grunge, and, to a degree, the Nineties in general, it\u2019s Melissa\u2019s perspective and position that truly give them weight. \u201cHaving a photographer in the band [who\u2019s] a woman \u2026 is obviously my unique angle\u201d, she points out. \u201cI\u2019m not a girlfriend of a band member. I\u2019m not a boy in a band. I\u2019m a girl in a band.\u201d There\u2019s also the fact that she was in many instances the only one with a camera, at a time when analogue was the norm. \u201cI\u2019m the only person in this entire stadium taking a picture at this minute,\u201d Melissa says as we examine one of the many concert photographs on view. \u201cThat is a huge deal. The press photographers only had the first three songs in the pit. No one in the band had [a camera].\u201d<\/p>\n Surrounded by all these impromptu pictures \u2013 of Love, in particular \u2013 I recall one of David Bowie\u2019s publicists telling me how the \u2018man who fell to Earth\u2019 was very protective of his image and the way he was photographed<\/a>. What was Love like in this respect? \u201cShe has big issues of self-presentation,\u201d Melissa says, \u201cbut she’s also the most raw, open, screaming, crying human, so she\u2019s not vain in that superficial way. But mostly, I think what comes across in this collection is that she trusts me as she should, because I love her and I’m not going to make her look bad. I\u2019m going to show the truth. She knows that we\u2019re guardians of each other\u2019s souls, so she\u2019s not going to be concerned about what photos I show.\u201d<\/p>\n I also think about Melissa\u2019s fly-on-the-wall approach in general (interestingly, her German surname translates to \u2018off the wall\u2019 in English). Was it ever considered invasive? \u201cNo, because they all trusted me,\u201d she says resolutely. \u201cI mean, at this point, it\u2019s pretty obvious I\u2019m not doing anything for fame, money or glory. I\u2019m doing it because I\u2019m a human being on the quest of, like, why do we exist? How do we experience the world?\u201d She continues, \u201cNo one in my story thinks that I\u2019m, like, trying to make a buck of anything. Nor am I trying to be, nor am I career-oriented. I’m just expression-oriented.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"My](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/476805.jpg\")
Melissa Auf der Maur, Courtney Love on Bike, Backstage, \u201cSelf-Destruct\u201d Nine Inch Nails tour, USA, 1994\u00a9 Melissa Auf der Maur<\/p>\n
![\"My](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/476810.jpg\")
Melissa Auf der Maur, Self-Portrait on Stage with the Smashing Pumpkins, Cape Town, South Africa, 2000\u00a9 Melissa Auf der Maur<\/p>\n