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Valley photographer focuses on pandemic performance art

Photographer Mollie Crowe displays her concert photography in "Playing to an Empty Room: A Visual Herstory of Live Music in a Lockdown," which opens Friday at Youngstown's Soap Gallery. (Staff photo / Andy Gray)

YOUNGSTOWN — Mollie Crowe and her camera are familiar sights at area music venues, from taking shots of local bands in bars to photographing Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees at the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre.

For her first gallery show, there are plenty of musicians playing instruments, but one component of concerts is missing — an audience.

“Playing to an Empty Room: A Visual Herstory of Live Music in a Lockdown,” which opens Friday at the Soap Gallery, documents the shows Crowe photographed at Westside Bowl during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The venue was prohibited from hosting live shows, but owners Nate and Jami Offerdahl livestreamed concerts on its social media accounts featuring area acts playing to an empty room, except for the camera operators providing the live-stream and Crowe.

“The story was already there, and it was really important for me to tell,” Crowe said Friday while taking a break from hanging the exhibition. “I think it’s a piece of history that a lot of people overlook.

“There was an entire year without live music. We lost venues because of it. Just about everything in our lives has been changed by it, so this was a really important story for me to tell. This was a huge part of me making it through the pandemic, having this and being able to still be creative and have that outlet. Not everyone had that.”

Crowe, 34, said she was in the right place at the right time to get the opportunity. She shot a lot of bands when she was in high school, underground shows at skate parks and fire halls, but she drifted away from it as she got older. She started Little Blackbird Photo in 2015 and was shooting a lot of weddings and baby pictures when she decided in late 2019 that she wanted to start photographing bands again.

At the beginning of 2020, she reached out to Nate Offerdahl, who told her she was welcome to shoot any of their shows.

“I was open to working with anybody because I needed to rebuild my portfolio and get reacquainted with working in low-light settings and shooting people who are moving,” she said. “If you guys are willing to let me take pictures and be my guinea pigs, I’m willing to shoot anybody.

“I was there for two months before the shutdown happened. Just by luck I was the last person to shoot there, and they were like, ‘We’re going to have these livestream shows. How would you feel about coming and taking pictures?’ For me it was, ‘Absolutely.’ I was sitting at home, I was depressed. I wanted to be doing what I loved, and none of us knew if we were ever going to be able to do it in person again. This is as close as I can get.”

Crowe, who graduated from Canfield High School and now lives in Boardman, said photographing bands performing in an empty venue appealed to the introvert in her, and it allowed for a more intimate relationship with the acts she was photographing. There was more freedom of movement and, unlike shows at larger venues with national acts, she wasn’t limited to shooting only the first two or three songs.

“My passion throughout the livestream series was drummers,” she said. “I became obsessed with photographing drummers. Any other time they’re shoved in the back of the stage and it’s really hard to see them, especially in bigger venues, so it’s hard to get a good shot of the drummer.

“I finally figured out what it is about drummers I love photographing. They hold the most facial expressions when they play and for me, someone who is very introverted, their facial expressions are close to how I feel when I’m doing what I do. That’s how I feel inside, that same energy.”

When she got an opportunity to display her work at Soap Gallery, she knew she wanted to include images that conveyed the emptiness of the space as well as the performers on the stage, and she decided to only use black-and-white photography.

“I’m such a sucker for black-and-white photos. What I love about black-and-white photography is it strips it down to its bare bones. You’re focusing on the subject, you’re focusing on the picture, you’re focusing on the emotion it’s evoking. Color, sometimes it can add to it, but this is a heavier subject, there’s a lot of deeper feeling with it, and I just felt black-and-white set the mood for the subject.”

Crowe went through thousands and thousands of images to select the 75 works that will be on display — at least that how many she expected to limit herself to last week.

“Where do I stop? Fifty led to 63, 63 led to 70, and when I got to 70, ‘Oh, I’ll just do 75.’ I still have more prints at home, but I think this is the exact amount I want to have. More would be a little too overwhelming, and I think the story might get lost in the noise of it.”

Appropriate for a concert photography show, the opening reception at 6 p.m. Friday will feature live music by Hayden Brooke and Lexi Kays. That’s not the only thing that will add to the rock club milieu.

“There will be cheap beer and greasy food. I hope everyone buys something, because I don’t want to load all of this back into my car.”

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