How Bad Religion guitarist Brian Baker’s iPhone photos became a visual punk rock diary

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Brian Baker is a highly respected guitarist with a significant history in punk and hardcore music. He helped define the hardcore genre as a teenager with the band Minor Threat, then broadened the sound with Dag Nasty. Later, joining Bad Religion in the mid-90s, he cemented his place as one of the most influential guitarists in the scene.

You know, when people ask me about playing with those iconic bands, I always feel like I just got lucky – being in the right place at the right time. But honestly, the most important thing for me is honoring what those bands already mean to people. It’s a huge deal for a lot of fans, way more so than it is for me personally. I’m just the guitar player, but I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be part of groups that really resonated with people. That thought actually goes through my head every time I step on stage. I really want to do a good job and deliver a performance that I can be proud of, and hopefully, the audience will feel that too.

Backstage at Chicago’s Riot Fest, a large punk rock festival filled with bands Baker knows or that are influenced by his own work, Baker recently unveiled a new musical project. He’s been quietly developing this project for nearly two decades, all while continuing to perform with Bad Religion. It seems, after almost 50 years in music, he has a knack for being involved with one iconic band after another.

When the iconic Los Angeles punk band tours, Baker, like many musicians on the road, has a lot of downtime before and after shows. To pass the time in unfamiliar cities, the 60-year-old, originally from Washington D.C., started using his smartphone. Instead of just browsing social media or watching videos, he discovered a love for photography, and he’s been taking pictures with every iPhone camera lens since the very first models came out in the late 2000s.

For a long time, photographer Baker mainly shared his work on his Instagram account. But recently, things aligned – as he often says happens with his achievements – allowing him to publish a collection of his favorite photos in a book called “The Road,” which was released on November 4th by Akashic Books.

“My wife suggested for a long time that people might want to look at my photographs, and I was like ‘OK, that’s great,’ but never really thought about it,” Baker says, his bandmates and other longtime friends circulating through Chicago’s Douglass Park. “Eventually, a good friend of ours named Jennifer Sakai — who’s a great photographer and has made books in the past — made a mock-up from my Instagram of what a book could look like. I wasn’t looking to make a book, but she basically presented a finished product to me, so I contacted a guy I went to elementary school with, Johnny Temple — who plays [bass] in Girls Against Boys and Soulside and has a publishing company. Much like my more successful rock bands, I walked in after everyone did all the work, and now I’m just going to coattail it.”

Baker says his passion for photography started as a way to cope with memory loss, especially memories from his years of touring. After becoming sober, he found himself with a lot of free time – over 20 hours a day – away from performing. He began taking long walks and exploring places he enjoyed, like old churches, interesting buildings, and even graveyards (which he jokingly attributes to a non-goth interest). Rather than trying to create a grand narrative with his photos, he’s content simply capturing moments and showcasing the many ways to fill his time, as seen in his book, “The Road.”

Baker used to bring a film camera on tour, take a few rolls of pictures, and then often leave it behind at hotels. He doesn’t consider himself a photographer, just someone who now constantly takes pictures with his cellphone. He’d snap photos of interesting things – a strange object, a meal, or a unique building – without thinking of them as a collection or intending for anyone beyond close friends and family to see them. He eventually started posting some of these photos on Instagram, but he doesn’t consider himself particularly skilled at social media either.

Beyond his talent as a photographer, Baker is showcasing his storytelling abilities this fall with book signings and appearances at places like bookstores and record shops – including Book Soup in West Hollywood and Programme Skate & Sound in Fullerton starting in early October. He jokes that even though these smaller, more personal events are different from his concerts – and he’s without his guitar – it still feels like performing: he’s still on stage, using a microphone, and, of course, wearing his signature black pants.

The book tour has allowed Baker to meet fans and think about his career, including his time with Bad Religion, his earlier bands, and projects like Fake Names and Beach Rats. He feels his involvement in punk rock was largely accidental, but he attributes Bad Religion’s lasting success to consistently being different, writing smart lyrics about enduring themes, and simply enjoying playing music together without focusing on long-term goals. Surprisingly, he believes this lack of planning has been key to their longevity.

Ultimately, Baker’s spontaneous approach to photography—a lack of rigid planning—echoes the raw, self-made spirit of his early album-making, which is now considered the cornerstone of the worldwide hardcore scene he helped build over the last forty years.

Baker compares the current ease of creating and sharing work to his early days with the band Minor Threat. Back then, they independently recorded and sold their music in high school. He sees a parallel with photography today – he simply takes pictures, and now those pictures have been published as a book. He appreciates that anyone can create and share their work independently.

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2025-11-18 00:01