I have been shooting music festivals for promoters for many years. One day I was standing on a boomlift, high above the crowd and took a break from shooting the artists on the stage. Looking back at the crowd, I knew I had found my subject for a series of personal works.
In order to get the images to convey the feeling of looking at such a scene, I shot them on 8×10 film, so that the prints would be “overloaded” with information.
Although the image is filled with people, I think of it as a landscape. The space is both natural and artificial, an empty hill and a seething crowd. It is a space designed to be filled. The space creates a crowd and the crowd transform the space.
What interests me is the relationships between the individuals; the way they arrange themselves in a defined area and create a mass, like atoms composing an element. Their clothes speak a language. So do their tattoos and their make up, their muscles and breast implants.
Although it stands alone, this image also forms the right panel of a diptych with my other submission, Brisbane I.
Festival submissions
Submit your photo series to be considered for solo or group exhibitions in Head On Photo Festival 2025. Submissions close 8pm Monday 24 March Sydney time (GMT+11)