Earlier this year Zagaris released Total Excess through Reel Art Press, which brings a number of these images together. A show by the same name is currently on view at Milk Gallery in New York. Zagaris spoke with American Photo about his unlikely journey to photography and what it was like to cull through his massive archive.
Michael Zagaris has had an interesting trip, to say the least. His new book Total Excess covers his candid music photography, ranging from artists including the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed to the Sex Pistols. “It’s kind of like it’s been a visual diary, but more than that for me, it’s an ongoing experience,” Zagaris tells TIME.
To converse with photographer Michael Zagaris is to feel like a bubble inside a just poured Coca-Cola; your head jumps from story to story, happiness swirling around you. Football, baseball, San Francisco, and the music scene all jockey for attention as you speak. Time becomes non-essential because you want to hear more about the parties that ended with broken hearts or disbandment. You want to know what life is like inside the world of sports while the crowd sits outside. To his friends- and he has many- he is “Z.”
