Photographer Goes Viral Making an attempt to Find Random Kid Who Posed With Metallica

A former photographer has gone viral this week after he shared his 1996 photograph of a random child posing with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich from Metallica, asking if anybody is aware of who the younger individual is.

“I scanned the photo about seven or eight years ago and I was like, ah, I forgot about this picture,” Vincent Pugliese tells PetaPixel.

After digitizing the movie photograph, Pugliese shared it on his social media and it didn’t acquire a lot traction. But per week or so in the past he tried once more, explaining that, “About once every four or five years, I try to find the kid in this photo.”

He tells PetaPixel, “I noticed that it got more traction… And all of a sudden, I was talking to my wife and I get a notification. I’m like, you mind if I change the topic real quick? Metallica just shared my post.”

The official Metallica Facebook web page — that’s adopted by 36 million individuals — had reposted Pugliese’s image with the message, “C’mon everyone… let’s help Vincent finally get this pic to the young man in this photo! (…and we’re not talking about us!)”

Unsurprisingly, Pugliese’s unique submit then blew up. “Metallica is one of my favorite bands since I was 14,” he says. “So to have them share it, and then all of a sudden I watched it go from 100 shares to 1,800 shares in 12 hours.”

The Story of the 1996 Metallica Kid Photo

In 1996, Pugliese was working for Bruce Bennett Studios, which offered crew images for the New York Rangers.

“I was young and green, so I would always stay around as long as I could,” Pugliese explains. “Most people went home. I just kind of hung around after the game, kind of trying to get some behind-the-scenes images, and that’s when this happened.”

He says the band’s singer and drummer, Hetfield and Ulrich, simply appeared alongside him backstage in Madison Square Garden.

“So I struck up a conversation with the two of them. I learned that they were there to hang out with Jaromir Jagr — a star player for the Pittsburgh Penguins and a huge music fan,” says Pugliese.

“I then asked if I could shoot a picture of them… Lars told me that for promotional reasons, it couldn’t just be the members of Metallica in the picture. The kid in this photo was nearby, so we asked him if he wanted to be in the picture.

“I don’t think the kid had any clue who they were.”

The photograph — that Pugliese thinks was shot on Fujifilm 800 and pushed just a few stops — was by no means revealed and primarily forgotten about till he scanned it years later.

Now, as his mission to search out the random child intensifies, Pugliese is receiving numerous messages from individuals claiming to be the child or that they know the child — an Instagram web page titled ‘kidfrommetallicaconcert1996’ was even arrange.

Someone even joked, “Find the bowl and scissors used for that haircut and you’ll find the kid.” But regardless of all the eye, Pugliese isn’t any nearer to discovering the younger man posing with Metallica.

Vincent Pugliese could be discovered on Facebook and Instagram.

Image credit: Photographs by Vincent Pugliese.