Music

These Amazing Music Festival Photos Will Make You Feel Like You’re Tripping

Sarah Anne Johnson’s first taste of independence was at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1991. Growing up in an incredibly strict household, like many Manitoban teenagers, she had limited opportunities for rebellion. For a 15-year-old, attending the overnight festival without parental supervision, was a chance to finally let loose.

“It was a very important part of my youth,” says Johnson. “Dancing, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and staying up to watch the sunrise—it was bliss.” This teenage experience was the catalyst for a lifelong infatuation with festival culture, and since then, she’s attended events across North America from Burning Man to Lollapalooza.

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Today she’s an internationally-acclaimed photographer, whose work has been shown at Paris’ Fondation Cartier, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada, among others.

Her latest exhibition, Field Trip, spans the course of four summers between 2011 and 2015, during which she attended several British Columbia festivals including Shambhala and The Field. With the project currently on display at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection gallery in Kleinberg, Ontario, as part of this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival, we spoke to Johnson about her surreal, digitally-enhanced images.

THUMP: What drove you to document the contemporary festival experience?

Sarah Anne Johnson: In the late 90s, I was trying to take photos at festivals, but I was too busy partaking in festival activities. I was literally just too high to take photos. They were either out of focus or just so badly boring. So I’ve been going by myself and camping out alone. I was finally able to get some photographs that I thought were useful.

It’s been 25 years since your first music festival. Do you see any major differences between the past and present events?
I’ve been going to Shambhala for so long and I’ve seen it change a ton. There’s more people, bigger headliners, and bigger bands. The crowd changes too. When Shambhala started, no one dressed up. You’d just camp, meet people, do drugs, drink and have a good time. Somewhere along the way, people started dressing up in costume, which seemed kind of funny and cool. Now it looks like a mix between American spring break and Halloween. There’s so many kids coming from the city, and they probably haven’t done any camping before or been to this sort of party.

Can you describe a typical day photographing a festival?
I would go off dancing. I would try and meet people. Maybe I’d pick up a hitchhiker on the way in and then go camp with his or her friends. I’d stay out taking pictures until 1:00AM and then I’d go home and catch a few hours of sleep. Then I’d go back out just before the sun was rising, and I’d take pictures of people who managed to stay up all night. They’d be exhausted, but they just weren’t ready to go home. They’d be doing this zombie dance.

How is documenting music festival culture different than some of the other work that you’ve done?
I don’t think that it is much different. I’m attracted to photographing beautiful places with groups of like-minded people who come together to experience something different from their regular lives. I guess at festivals, people are more receptive to being photographed because everyone’s on vacation and everybody’s in such a good mood.

Traveling alone, did you ever feel like your safety was jeopardized?
I had one scary night. I was camping by myself and the guy next to me was in his early-twenties. He was really sweet during the day and we had a nice conversation. That night at like three in the morning, I heard my name. I was so confused since I didn’t know anybody there. He said his name and I realized that it was my neighbour. I asked him if he was okay and he told me to come out of my tent and get drunk with him. I said I wasn’t going to do that.

Then I could hear him smashing stuff and getting aggravated. I heard him open a beer, chug it in seconds, and then smash it. He said he was going to come in my tent. Since I am older, and I was sober, I just clearly said, “No, don’t you fucking dare.” And he didn’t. Had I been in my early-twenties and a little drunk, who knows what would have happened. There’s a lot more yahoos going to festivals now.

In a past exhibit, you explored the world of tree planters and tree planting. Did you notice any similarities?
Yes, both cultures share a love and reverence for nature and connecting with the natural world. They’re both a reversal of societal norms—you don’t have to dress any certain way, you don’t have to be anywhere at any certain time. You’ve got no commitments. You can really test your limits and lose your inhibitions without judgement.

Were you inspired by the work of any other artists when you were putting together this exhibition?
I was thinking about art that’s inspired by nature, particularly the Group of Seven’s paintings about searching for sublime experience and utopian ideals of nature. When I was making this work, I listened to a lot of Mozart and anything with a strong cello. It helped to calm me when I was painting finicky details, but it also matched the epic beauty of the images.

Why did you opt to Photoshop the images?
I’ve always been frustrated with the limitations of how photography can express an experience. Photography is really good at showing you what something looks like, but you can’t really talk about anything more subjective. I also think that every straight photo has been made. Everybody has a camera in their pocket, every picture has been taken 100 times already. If you want to bring anything new to the medium, you’ve got to work a little harder.

You can see more of Sarah Anne Johnson’s work on her website here.

Rebecca Krauss is on Twitter.