Rob Coons

Rob Coons is a photographer who is based out of San Francisco. He grew up in Indiana and after a three year stint in Chicago he moved to California in 1990. Rob got into punk back in 1985 and attended his first punk show the following year. He was instantly hooked by the frantic energy and harsh aggression of the music and the vitriolic lyrics against the social and political landscape of the world. Despite constantly going to see live music for the last few decades of his life he did not buy a camera and start taking photos at shows until 2016!

Undeterred by not having any formal training in photography, he jumped right in and knew exactly what he wanted his photos to look like. Between the first time he saw Murray Bowles’s photo zine If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pit? that was put out by Maximum Rocknroll and looking at thousands of punk photos by other photographers over the years, he knew that a high energy, black and white aesthetic was the photographic vision that spoke to him the strongest.

While the majority of shows he attends are in the Bay Area, he loves travelling around the world to experience life and seek out music. He has photographed live bands as far away as Japan and Indonesia. He dreams of touring with a punk band someday and doing a photo documentation of the entire tour and turning it into a book.