"I Want Bands to Look as Cool as They Sound": Photographer Luke Ivanovich on Documenting the Shoegaze Scene

If you’ve been following the modern shoegaze scene, chances are you’ve already come across the work of Luke Ivanovich. His visual signature has become almost impossible to miss. In a genre built on “walls of sound,” where the music is meant to blur, swallow, and disorient, translating that energy into a still image is no easy task. 

Moving between DIY basements in New Jersey and stages across Brooklyn and Philadelphia, Luke Ivanovich has quietly become one of the most vital visual chroniclers of the scene—capturing everyone from emerging underground acts to defining bands like Nothing. His work resists the polished, hyper-sharp digital standard, instead leaning into motion blur, distortion, physical collage, and what he describes as “happy accidents.” 

Luke’s journey from documenting high school shows on a phone to creating a unique artistic dialect is a testament to the power of experimentation and being in the right place at the exactly right time. “If you were a photographer paying attention,” he says, “you were photographing shoegaze.”

In this interview, Luke talks about how he first started photographing the shoegaze scene and how he ended up shooting that now-iconic press photo of Nothing. He also breaks down the stories behind three of his most defining images, offering a rare look into his creative process, and shares a list of underrated bands that everyone should be paying attention to right now.

often, the best photos or edits are a result of me screwing something up or pressing the wrong button.

How did you first get into music photography, and what was it about the shoegaze scene specifically that made you want to document it?

I first got into music photography in early high school; back then, it mostly was on my phone, documenting my friends’ bands playing in New Jersey basements. I just really enjoyed documenting for my friends and making off-kilter edits. Eventually, I found my mom’s old Polaroid camera in a closet at my grandparents’ house and throughout college, that was my main medium for a while, though I would begin messing around with digital cameras around this time. My senior year, in 2018, I documented a weekender for my friends Have A Good Season on a friend’s DSLR that I borrowed for the weekend. So that was my first real foray. But really it was during the pandemic and the years following when I sat down and began experimenting more with textures and collage, and it started to feel a bit more serious. I invested in my own digital camera and got to work.

I got into shoegaze bands and bands adjacent to the subgenre in high school, I remember seeing Nothing and Pity Sex play Asbury Lanes back in 2014, so it was around that time was my first real exposure to that whole scene. I started more heavily documenting shoegaze bands sort of by accident, just kind of right place right time, by pure proximity of living in Jersey, next to two hot beds of shoegaze, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, as they were bubbling up. If you were a photographer paying attention to the scene, you were photographing shoegaze. I owe a lot to the band High., who I went on tour with to SXSW in 2023; not only does their music rock but through them I met a lot of killer bands; TAGABOW, Bleary Eyed, Velvet, Mx Lonely, Glixen, Knifeplay, Shower Curtain, Flooding, etc. I guess my more “experimental” nature, utilizing motion blur and collage (physical and digital), lent itself more to the ethereal nature of the music. Ultimately, I’m trying my best to capture the energy of a gig and how the music makes me feel. I want bands to look as cool as they sound. Just doing what feels right. It is music that soundtracked so much of my life that it is cool and surreal to be intertwined a bit in that scene now.

 If you were a photographer paying attention to the scene, you were photographing shoegaze.

Can you take us back to that first gig or a photoshoot where everything clicked and you realized, 'Wow, I’m actually really good at this'? Which band that was, and what did that specific shot look like?

I am very proud of all of my work but I don’t know if I will ever think I am really good at this. It is always a learning process. However, really any time I am shooting a show and I am presented with a challenge, like “wow this lighting is going to pose a problem,” my brain starts to work in overtime and I know I will need to get creative once I get home.

One show that comes to mind is when I took photos for the project Dazy last April at TV Eye. Admittedly not the best lighting situation at the venue in general, but the lighting for James’ set was different; just the lighting from his projector that illuminated him and the stage. I tried my best to just work with all the shadows and the sparse lighting. I took a bunch of fisheye shots and in post, I overlayed them all together on a black digital backdrop. After lots of layering of filters I made, and overlaying this one warped fisheye shot on top of the other fisheye shots, I printed it onto blank vintage record sleeve paper. It is more of a collage than a “pure photo,” but it is something I am very proud of. I just enjoy creating and fucking around and just trying things. If it doesn’t work, that’s ok! But when it does, it is a good feeling. Also, just lots of love for the whole Dazy project, it is power pop at its finest modern incarnation. Very grateful for his support over the last few years. 

If you had to pick three photographs from your portfolio that define your work with shoegaze bands, which ones would they be? What is the story behind those shots?

First image is a cyanotype collage I made for Spirit of the Beehive in 2023, in the leadup for their EP, “i’m so lucky.” To be honest with you, I was so green when I did that shoot, I cringe thinking back on that time. But it was an awesome experience, and is still some work I am very proud of. Three years later, I still get compliments on those shots, it is mind boggling to me. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous for a shoot honestly. It was my first time in a photo studio, first time working with a more established band on a bigger label, but I think the results came out pretty cool. My buddy Alex Kucy helped me with lighting, which was a massive help. We shot in this a studio out in this warehouse in Philly for a few hours; we went in with a rough concept of “shitty Sears family portraits” on the mind. And then we drove to a park not too far away for some outdoor shots. The collage came together fairly quickly; I overlayed multiple images from the shoot on Sketchbook, played with the opacity, made it black and white, inverted it, and printed it out onto a plastic sheet to create a negative. And I made a cyanotype exposure onto some unused white fabric I found from my late grandmother, who was a seamstress. I don’t recall if this particular collage was used in that press cycle much, but it is among my favorite pieces I’ve had the pleasure of making for a band. I think it reflects the sound of that EP well, which if you haven’t listened to it, would highly recommend. Shouts out to Spirit for being rad, shouts out to my homie Dawood from Bloody Knuckles for helping make that whole shoot happen.

The second photo here is a shot I took fairly recently of the band, Ringing, who just put out a really killer record. We were walking along some abandoned train tracks for some press shots and I took this really shrouded out shot. Really not the greatest lighting, but we were trying to capture this blurry, washed out look. When I was editing, I was messing around with overlaying another image for texture and I accidentally took this horizontal image and clicked “fit to canvas” and it squished the image into the 3:4 frame I was editing in. And to my eyes, I thought it looked better this way. I printed it onto thermal paper and that’s the final result below. The lesson learned here is to embrace all the mistakes. So often, the best photos or edits are a result of me screwing something up or pressing the wrong button. Or maybe a camera dies out or just doesn’t want to work properly and you have to do a shoot with your backup camera. Shit happens! But it is out of these mistakes, you can get those diamonds in the rough. I am sure there is someone out there saying, “Luke, that’s just an underexposed, shitty photo.” And they may very well be right. But I like it, the band likes it, and it represents a massively important truth to me; that not everything needs to be perfect and by the books to work. In an age where algorithms demand perfection, feeling and texture mean way more to me than making everything look sharp and crystal clear. Massive thanks to Ringing for being cool and digging the vision.

This third pic is another collage, this time of my homies Golden Apples, when they played at Warsaw in Brooklyn in November 2025. Russell has been a dear friend and supporter of my work for a while now and I am just a big ol fan of his music too. Anytime I can pop off and make a cool edit for my pals makes me happy. The base image I took on my Lumix GX1. I used a glass guitar slide over my lens to get the circular light reflections on the photo, and the lighting created this silhouette. In post, I took the lyrics to the chorus of their song, “Mind,” this jangly, psychedelic banger on their album “Shooting Star,” twisted them around to match the circular light reflections. After adding in the orange color, I then printed onto paper for additional texture. There were a lot of great edits and photos from this gig, probably some of my favorite work from last year. It was a different sort of edit than what I usually churn out. I was just trying shit out to see if it would work. I like to think that it did. Golden Apples truly rules by the way, I cannot stress enough. Pay attention to anything they put out. 

Bonus shot just for shits and giggles. I feel like this press photo of Nothing has been plastered all over everything and everywhere and maybe some folks, maybe even the band at this point too, are sick and tired of seeing it. Which is totally valid. But what I really love about this shot is that I gave the band very little direction when taking it. You can tell it is just them having fun, that it was a loose and quick photo session prior to them going on stage. Just goofing around, not taking it all so seriously, making finger guns at me and each other, etc. Maybe isn’t all tripped out or experimental, but it to me represents the comradery I have experienced when it comes to the shoegaze scene. I think of Slide Away and all of the support for other creatives and opportunities for up-and-coming bands it represents. Bands and photographers uplifting one another. The collaboration. It is community. “Luke it’s just a stupid press photo.” Well, to me, it isn’t! It never is. There is always meaning. And that’s a beautiful thing. And there also was a bit of experimenting here: the shot was also printed onto blank newspaper to get an old Melody Maker magazine feel to it.

You’ve captured some very cool shots of Nothing. How did that collaboration first come to life?

Thank you! Yeah that’s my gang. I got connected with Nothing after shooting the first Slide Away in 2024 at Union Transfer in Philly. I reached out to the folks in Knifeplay and Glixen and was shooting for them that year, so that’s kinda how I got into their orbit. Though I had seen Nicky and crew ten years prior at the Lanes, I did not know them all directly. I posted my photos a week later, Nicky and Nothing’s manager Marissa seemed to dig my work, they reposted some of my shots, and we just kept in touch. Since then, they have been big supporters of me and let me do my thing, of which I am eternally grateful. The following year, a tour I was planning on traveling with fell through and I reached out to shoot Slide Away 2025, asking if they wanted some behind the scenes stuff, that sorta thing. They were down and we finally all got to properly introduce ourselves and get to know each other and hang. Since then, I have gotten to shoot some dates on the Nothing/Whirr tour last summer, as well as some BTS for the “toothless coal’ video. And more to come! The plan is to be at Slide Away 2026 and am very stoked. It was and still is very surreal to know this crew and call them homies, let alone know they mess with my work. It means a lot and just very touched by their kindness and respect for my art.  

Shoegaze is famously loud and atmospheric. Technically, how do you try to 'visualize' that wall of sound in a still image? 

I touched on this a bit before, but I am always trying my best to capture the energy and movement of the music being played. With a little practice, anyone can take a good by-the-books photo. But for me, it is important to visualize the shapes and textures, as well as the action in front of me. That is how I approach visualizing the atmosphere. I attempt to combine all that in some capacity in post to accurately capture my interpretation of a gig. The focus is always to compliment the music with an accompanying equally stimulating, visual element. I want both fans and bands to see a photo and be like “hey I remember that night, I remember being there” and also, “man, these images make me feel something.” So, if I can successfully capture that essence when photographing and editing, I’ve done my job. 

I also try not to overthink the process of shooting as much as I can. Shoot whatever I am feeling in the moment, while also trying my best to pay attention to my surroundings. My process is very mood oriented, just as much as it is capturing the special moments. If the set is aggressive, I want the photos to reflect that. If the set is melancholic, slow, brooding, I want the pics to make you feel that brooding feeling. 

Maybe I am taking a picture of the lead singer belting their heart out, and then I will zoom in on their guitar, slow my shutter speed down, adjust the f-stop and ISO, get some hand motion. And then overlay the two images and see how that looks. Maybe the drummer is going all over their kit, there is a lot of motion to capture in just a few short seconds. Or maybe there is a very still peaceful, quiet moment on stage. There is power in that too. Getting THE action jump shot is rad, but it’s just as important to capture the vibes coming from a band that maybe does not move around as much. A lot of my process though is in post and with a lot of printing and scanning, so it is rare that I am not sharing something that is edited in some capacity. But I try to strike a balance when editing, that it doesn’t feel too much, that even if it is an extravagant edit/collage, it is not overpowering, oversaturated, or too high-res to the point where it looks like a deep-fried meme. I for sure fail at this, but that is the goal at least. 

As someone who is constantly in the front row, you see a lot of emerging talent. Who is the most underrated shoegaze band right now that everyone should be paying attention to?

Only one? Heck. I’m gonna list a bunch: warmachine, Lying Season, Golden Apples, Host Family, Plaaato, Rippedd, headachee, Ringing, Magic America, Mila Culpa, Whisper Doll, Mx Lonely, Glimmer, Lucid Express, janedriver, Nara’s Room, Prettier Now, Ladder to God, Buff Ginger. All incredible projects and lovely people. If you are not familiar, get familiar. 

If you had a limitless pass for any stage today—who is the one artist or band you would love to photograph?

Oh boy. Lots come to mind. In terms of the larger shoegaze acts, MBV or Slowdive would of course be amazing. Lilys and Yo La Tengo too. But there are a lot of bands (not necessarily all shoegaze) that I would love to catch and work with in some capacity that I haven’t yet; Julie, Gaadge, untitled (halo), Halloween, She’s Green, Forty Winks come to mind. I’ve seen Alex G play like 7 times since 2015, but I never had the opportunity to take “proper” photos of one of his sets. So that would be cool one day!