Alter Natives Naomi Petersen Photo Session Richmond, Virginia, USA Spring 1987
The color photos here were taken at our practice space on Cary Street across from the Wonder Bread Outlet. We moved there after everyone got kicked out of the Dairy, moved for a short time to the Lucky Strike building (GWAR had two whole floors of that block-long building for $300 a month) until that ended abruptly as well.
We practiced on the 2nd floor, and, besides the cheap rent ($75 bucks a month), we had the extra bonus of having the space smell like fresh baked Wonder Bread no matter how much we smoked in there.
It was a glorious time for us. We had our first album released on favorite record label (SST Records), had done a couple of regional and national tours, and we were practicing hours each day, 5-6 days a week, honing our craft and composing tunes for our next album. It literally was our collective dream come true.
And, to top it all off, the one and only Naomi Petersen was in town to take press photos of us for the label. We were in awe of her as she was the Annie Leibovitz of the American underground. A legend in her own right, she took iconic photos of all the big names in 80s music from Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets to Sonic Youth, Minor Threat and everyone big and small in between. We could hardly believe she was in town to take photos of us nerdballs.
And that’s what strikes me most about these photos. We really were a bunch of nerds. Though we all were immersed in all things in the 80s punk underground, we never really fit in. We were too hippie for punks, too punk for the hippies, and too weird for the straights. And that’s the way we liked it. We lived in the margins between all those worlds content to be nothing more than what we were. We’d spend hours and hours playing together. It’s just what we did.
The black and white photos are from the house we lived in at 123 S Pine Street (right behind the Oregon Hill 7-11) and the median strip on the corner of Belvidere and Cumberland. The Daily Planet, a homeless shelter, used to be across Belvidere from our house and almost every night, the homeless would be ripping up our fence, screaming, yelling and partying in our backyard. It used to drive our landlord crazy. “Why don’t you call the police?” the youngish couple that owned the house would say surveying the monthly damage when they came to collect the rent. We didn’t have the heart to tell them that we didn’t care. I mean, even if we did call the cops, they wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway.
Naomi was such a good friend to us. I think she knew how innocent we truly were in the seedy excesses that define the entertainment business. We spent hours and hours talking about all the bands and records we loved, the great shows we saw and all the people that made all us weirdos feel like we weren’t alone in Reagan’s America. Like us, she was first and foremost a fan of music and we bonded almost instantly from the first time we met. Over the years, I’ve talked to countless other people that had that kind of connection with her.
Naomi was one of the good ones. She made you feel glad to be alive.
Extra special thanks to Chris Petersen for sharing these photos with us.
C. Maynard Bopst 2/8/26
Electric Cowbell Records is releasing a remastered four-album collection of the complete Alter Natives discography through its new Richmond Relics imprint on February 13, 2026.
