Seattle is famous as the ground zero for grunge music, but Edmonds is where the talent behind the iconic photos of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam in the early 1990s lives. Local photographer and Edmonds High alumna Karen Mason-Blair did a signing of her self-published book The Flannel Years at Musicology Co. during Edmonds Art Walk Thursday. 

She also showcased many rarely seen photos that not only chronicle the rise of Seattle’s grunge bands but also encapsulate the relationship between Mason-Blair and the musicians.

“My story is very unique in that they were all my friends,” Mason-Blair said, referring to Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell. “And it wasn’t like I just got called to go shoot a band that I did not know or did not know their music. So they would say, ‘Karen, take my pictures! Take my pictures!’”

Some of these photos include backstage shots of Cobain and Novoselic wearing Santa hats on Halloween 1991. Mason-Blair printed and framed the photos and gave copies to them. A year later, DCG Records called Mason-Blair and told her that Cobain had mailed one of the Santa hat photos to them, which was featured in Nirvana’s album In Utero.

Mason-Blair talked about a close-up photo of Cornell that she took at her studio in 1991. “When Chris Cornell is looking at you like this, it’s a pretty good day,” she said. I mean, that’s the relationship I had. So my photos are very relational, you know?”

Mason-Blair also pointed to the photo of Cobain smiling while sporting a pair of white-framed sunglasses. “And when Kurt Cobain’s smiling, you can’t have a bad day if [he’s] smiling,” she said.

Kurt Cobain smiles in one of Karen Mason-Blair’s photos at Musicology Co.When she was attending Edmonds High School in the early 1980s, Mason-Blair learned black-and-white photography in her yearbook class and took photos of her then-boyfriend’s band Rage. After she earned a degree in commercial photography from Seattle Central College, Mason-Blair went to Los Angeles to pursue her career while continuing her photography education at UCLA.

While photographing bands performing in L.A., Mason-Blair said she would be the only woman working in the concert pit. She said all of her clients, record executives and band managers were men. “All the gates were guarded by men that want ‘favors’ and it’s very disgusting,” Mason-Blair said. “It’s just so corrupt. There’s no way…if that’s the way to my future or to my success, I don’t want it, you know.”

“But the good news is that, you know, Kurt and Krist – all of them – they were total feminists, and they wanted to empower women, and they actually liked working with women,” Mason-Blair continued. “They actually helped me and would say, ‘I want to work with Karen.’ I just didn’t realize how special that was because when I went to L.A., that wasn’t the case. So it was a pretty magical moment.”

Edmonds resident Andrea Wetzel said she came to meet Mason-Blair because she also used to work with many rock bands in the 1990s, including Susan Silver, who managed Alice in Chains.

“I might have known her [Mason-Blair],” Wetzel said. “And it turns out, I think we do know each other. I wanted to see the book…and I want to see what I haven’t seen before.

Grunge fans Genavee Hayden of Lynnwood and Krys Lowe of Edmonds came to meet Mason-Blair. “I’m here because this is a synopsis of my life in the ’80s and ’90s,” Hayden said. 

Mason-Blair did her first photographic tour on June 4, 2016 at Treason Gallery in Seattle and ended on Aug. 10, 2019 at the “Nostalgia is for Losers: a grunge retrospective” show at Fogue Studios & Gallery. Now she plans to take her photos and tour beyond Seattle. That tour would include backstage photos of Soundgarden and Nirvana, photo sessions with Mother Love Bone and Alice in Chains, and the only known photos of Pearl Jam’s first concert in 1990.

Looking back at the photo of Cobain in his white sunglasses, Mason-Blair recalled Cobain said in an interview that people tend to choose photos of him looking depressed during a photo session. 

“We’re backstage, and I’m taking his pictures, and I go, ‘Kurt, can you smile?’” Mason-Blair said. “And he goes, ‘Karen, you always say that.’ I go, ‘Yeah, and you always like my photos.’ And he knew that they told me it was his favorite photo, so he knew that I got him…but that’s why I want people to know this and Kurt loved me, you know.

“And I want people to know that Kurt was a happy person.”

– Story and photos by Nick Ng