Dash Snow Is Dead

Dash Snow died three days ago. He overdosed.

A lot of famous people died during my conscious life. 2Pac, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, the pope, Richard Avedon, Joe Strummer... All of those were far away fantasy stardom deaths. They happened, I read the obituaries in the papers, end of the story. This one feels different, this one feels surprisingly close.

Dash Snow was about my age, I was lucky to follow his career from the very beginning. I had mixed feelings about his art, but it certainly did strike me. I always thought of him as of Jay Adams of this gritty genre of photography. When Ryan McGinley became a sort of art-world superstar producing safe and magazine-friendly photo shoots, Dash Snow seemed to be staying faithful to his filthy roots. He stayed hard-core dirty and full-on romantic. To me these guys were like two sides of one coin.

I often wonder who of "this generation's" photographers is going to be remembered. who are people in, say, 50 years going to read about in their e-paper books on the history of photography. For today the odds are this is going to be Dash Snow.