Yeah, that Northwest Passage thing at EMP is pretty cool, but if you can wangle an invitation to KAREN MOSKOWITZ’s Capitol Hill loft (which she shares with her composer husband, former Sky Cries Mary/Shriekback guitarist Michael Cozzi), you’ll see way cooler pictures of a lot of the same musiciansand Moskowitz is far more engaging and insightful than those clunky headset things they give you at the museum. As soon as you walk in, you’re drawn to photographs of Tad and Mark Arm making like the Misfits meeting the Mod Squad (a spoof on their stints at Muzak), Candlebox dressed up like Courtney Love, and Modest Mouse looking uncharacteristically modest. Further inside, there are pictures of Courtney Love dressed as Courtney Love, a portrait of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, proof sheets of the black-and-whites Moskowitz took for the all-girl rock band the Donnas, Polaroids of Layne Staley, images of some mullet-sporting separatists in Alaska, and a hilarious snapshot of the photographer herself with P. Diddy (she did a bunch of his promo stuff a few years back). Moskowitz, who grew up in Indiana and got her degree in fine art photography, moved to Seattle in 1980 because she liked that it was a cross between a big city and small town. The “art-school refugee” began waiting tables and hanging the occasional show, but then some of her friends, who happened to be in bands, needed publicity shots. So she started taking them. Right about then, the entire world had its ear turned toward Seattle, and she got some exposure, too. But she took a left turn, traveling to India, where she lived with some Buddhist nuns and photographed them for a while. Upon returning home to a barrage of cover assignments from the now-defunct Seattle-based music rag The Rocket, Moskowitz realized that she could balance art photography with commercial photography, and that’s what she’s been doing ever since. She used her Rocket connections and her dad’s frequent-flier miles to travel to L.A. a couple times, and before she knew it, she was shooting the cover of Wired magazine’s second issue: They wanted their geeks to look like rock stars, and Moskowitz was the perfect woman for the job. Soon she had clients flying her all over the world, and her father’s accrued mileage was no longer an issue. Moskowitz has a knack for telling an entire story (sometimes fiction, sometimes not) with a single shot and a true gift for lighting her subjects in the most captivating, compelling ways. Once, while shooting grunge band Alice in Chains in her back alley, it started snowing, so she lit a box on fire behind them and the effect was stunninguntil the police showed up. But you get the idea. These days she’s more into shooting everyday people and developing her own concepts, but if you ever see J.Lo strolling down Pine Street near the KFC, you can bet she was just in to have her picture taken by our very own pop-idol portraitist.Laura Cassidy KAREN MOSKOWITZ’S PICKS BEST PLACE FOR JAPANESE FOOD: “I lived in Japan for a while when I was a kid; my stepmother is Japanese. So for Japanese food, I like Maneki in the ID. They have real Japanese comfort food therestuff that Americans wouldn’t even know to order. But for sushi, I like Sanmi over toward Magnolia. They have all the Japanese newspapers lying around.” BEST PLACE TO GRAB LUNCH WHILE YOU’RE WORKING IN THE STUDIO: “We eat lunch at Ballet on Pike just about every day.” BEST PLACE TO BE ON THE HILL AND NOT FEEL LIKE YOU’RE “ON THE HILL”: “We go to the Elysian. It’s like our living room. You can eat and drink and just relax.” BEST CLOTHING BOUTIQUES: “I like Les Amis in Fremont and Olivine in Ballard.” info@seattleweekly.com