Portfolio: f-Stop Fitzgerald

by Beth E. Wilson, October 24, 2007

The Genesis of “f-Stop”
Back when I was taking that gut course at Geneseo, I was reading 20th-century American literature, so I invented it for myself—f-stop, F. Scott, why not? I did it as a joke, but when the punk scene came along, and people had names like Johnny Rotten or Sid Vicious, it just made perfect sense. Today, most people don’t know my real first name, other than f-Stop. The town board campaign signs we have up now [listing him as “f-Stop Minissali”] are actually the first time I’ve intermixed them. The Board of Elections made me do it. They wouldn’t take Fitzgerald, so I’ll be listed as Richard “f-Stop” Minissali on the ballot.

The San Francisco Scene
I saw some tremendous music back in those days [mid ’70s to late ’80s]. I saw the Police when they were an opening act, I saw U2 in a place that wasn’t much bigger than my studio here. I started shooting rock and roll just because I carried my camera with me in San Francisco, and I was always going to shows, to see the Grateful Dead in Golden Gate Park, that sort of thing. Then as the music changed [in the late ’70s], I was just documenting it. That late ’70s rock scene was fading, and there was this new thing, punk, coming in. I was there at the last concert by the Sex Pistols. I had an earache that night that really got painful. [Laughs.] It seemed appropriate at that show!

Then I collaborated on a couple of books, one called X-Capees, and a couple of my own books about the punk scene. I was kind of like the family photographer of the punk and New Wave scene in San Francisco. Saw some great music, shot a ton of stuff, and it’s been fun to get back into that sort of thing [with the current Rosendale Cafe show].

Digital Conversion
I love the immediacy of digital [photography]. It’s great, being able to send it off to a magazine that day is tremendous. I feel pretty good about handling the camera, but after spending about 30 years in the darkroom, I can make an 8-by-10 for reproduction in seconds, and now it takes me three hours in Photoshop. Now I have the new digital darkroom to work in—that’s the challenge.
I’m done [with film]. I’ve sold my 35mm film cameras, with the exception of a few that are museum pieces; gave away all my film. Most of what I do is book and magazine work, and the occasional exhibition, so I really don’t need film. My days as a silver engineer are over.


There’s Always Room for Jello
One of the more memorable stories that happened was when I was covering the Bammies [Bay Area Music Awards] as the staff photographer for Bay Area Music Magazine. The Dead Kennedys were going to perform, and you can imagine, there was a lot of tension as far as what they were going to do. They showed up wearing white shirts and skinny black ties, looking like The Knack, and they asked me to sneak in some spray paint—they would’ve gotten busted for it if they tried to bring it in—and then they painted big dollar signs on their white shirts, with the tie going through it. It was great—they came onstage with these dollar signs on there, in this big music ceremony. It made quite a big scene.

I did a book on the Dead Kennedys but Jello and I didn’t see eye to eye. I asked them for permission to do an authorized biography, and they said yes. But that meant to Jello that he wanted it to be his biography. And I said, “No, I’m not going to do that,” so I deauthorized it, and I gave him a page at the end of the book to trash me. Which he did.