Kurt Cobain 1993

Kurt Cobain 1993, shown here in one of the last portraits of the rock star, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, October 27, 1993, age 26.

The portrait was taken at the Park Trades Center in Kalamazoo on Oct. 27, 1993, according to Rolling Stone and Kalamazoo Gazette archives.

Nirvana was in Kalamazoo on Wednesday, Oct. 27, for a concert at Wings Stadium. Rolling Stone sent New York photographer Mark Seliger to photograph Nirvana the afternoon before the show. Seliger said Cobain was in a good mood during the photos, because he was excited for that night’s concert featuring two of his favorite bands, the Meat Puppets and the Boredoms.

According to Seliger, “There was some luck that day. We got Kurt at a very, very good time. He was seemingly in a great mood, very clean and clear.
We did that same portrait set-up for every member of the band. But I did a Polaroid, and since he knew I was doing a Polaroid, and that’s a test, there was something about that Polaroid that I didn’t get in the 10 shots on film that followed.
And I think, because in his mind it was just a test. you can really see in his eyes the sense of what I would consider to be almost melancholy and sadness. And the rest of the shoot was very joyful.
But at that moment there was a real connection, an internal thing that was happening with him. And after the shoot, I knew that that was the picture.”

“I had a Polaroid negative because this particular process is called 55 Polaroid. So you get a negative off of the Polaroid, and you have to stick it in a bucket with water until it washes. And then you dry it. I was on a plane going back from Michigan back to New York, because I had a job the next day. So here I was, walking through security with Kurt Cobain in my bucket. And what I loved about that image is that’s it’s almost like an Edward Curtis picture of a Native American.”

“It was that kind of soulful, formalistic approach to portraiture that I’ve always been attracted to. And then six months later we were in Paris, shooting the Counting Crows for a cover of Rolling Stone, and my editor called me up, and she said, ‘We need your picture. Kurt Cobain just shot himself.’ We lost an incredible artist and someone I’d really come to admire.”

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