A Conversation between Jonathan Rach and DJ Slude Sosa

(The following is an excerpt. A link to the full interview can be found below.)

L: I havephotographed Korn, Gojira, and some hardcore bands before. It’s the same for me: you have control over literally nothing. If I'm doing still photography, I know this person isn't moving. Shutter speed be gone. But [concert photography] is just chaotic. It's really just thinking on your feet and trying all sorts of different things, and for me personally, just taking as many photos as possible.

J: Yes, yes, yes. The focus here, as you know, is the performance and that particular time. And you know, music history, what that tournament was at that time, what it means now, you could have all this skill set that we're talking about, but it's something that 25 years later is not really relevant. The real gift is that Trent's still relevant. He's grown as an artist. His music is still edgy. It's still resonating, connecting with people again. I'm lucky again. My subject ended up having some kind of effect on the society of music and culture. So it's just like, this just doesn't happen for photographers. And then the crazy thing is these photographs, because they were not my main focus out there, they were something I was doing on the side while I was doing the documentary. They go in one big box, and they sit in that box for 25 years. Like, when does that even happen? No one saw these for 25 years, until Steve and Kelly saw a few online. I literally never even opened the box for 25 years; they collected dust at my mom's house. 

L: That was actually a question I had. From my understanding these are lost photos? How did the process of them becoming un-lost happen? 

J: You know, they really had no purpose. Back in the day, they weren't part of the documentary, they weren't part of the book. The internet didn’t exist. There was  no “yeah, okay, we got all these photos. We're gonna do it.” I think it was just me being protective, because I saw them and handed them over to Trent while working on the documentary in the studio. I think the box was just kind of sitting there. There was no need for them. There was no home for them. So I just decided “Well, let me box these up and send them to my mom's house where they would be safe.” And, you know, yeah, they just uncovered. 25 years later, COVID hit. I went back home to take care of my mom. This is in Pennsylvania, and I just remember being on tour with Nine Inch Nails, and I was very young. I was in my early 20s. I remember they would give us T-shirts and some things like my itinerary, my tour book, some clothing. Whenever you're on tour, you can't gather things, so you have to send stuff back home. And I just was like “You know, I'm gonna search for these photos.” I even said to my mom I was like “I sent boxes.” She's like, “Oh yeah, it's in the basement under the steps.” 25 years later i’m digging through all these boxes thinking that I'm going to sell these T-shirts, you know? I know that they would come up on the tour bus and show Trent prototype T-shirts to see if he liked them or not. And they would hand them out to everybody on the tour bus and I held on to them all, and eventually would send them back to my mom's– really bad bootlegs, you know, the security guys would come up and say, “We got to see these T-shirts”. And we would all get one, because it's a joke. There were horrible bootleg T-shirts. So I was like “Yeah, I feel like I got some really cool collectible T shirts there, and I'm going to sell them on eBay 25 years later.” And because they were relevant, I saw people were buying them for pretty good money. It was looking for T-shirts that I discovered all these photos, that's how they came up and then I wanted to sponsor them to become an exhibit. Steven sees one or two of them posted- I think I posted five of them, and there are hundreds of them. He said “Do you have more?” And I said “Yeah, I've got hundreds of them.” What started with eBay ended in an exhibit in New York, Los Angeles, and if I'm to understand, Australia, soon, Sydney, Melbourne, London, Tokyo.

L: Wow. You get to go everywhere.

J: It's awesome. This is ridiculous for a photographer to experience this kind of attention, you know? So the fans have been coming out and, I mean, this has been amazing. Just all so kind. Everybody's just been amazing. The sweetest, kindest people, man, it's really been incredible.

DJ Slude Sosa

FULL INTERVIEW: https://kxsc.org/articles/2025/3/31/a-look-inside-of-nine-inch-nails-the-downward-spiral-exhibition-interview-with-photographer-johnathan-rach