Glasto Pasts - A visual archive of the Glastonbury festival
I first went to Glastonbury in 1990 but only began to take photographs in 1995 and ceased in 2007. This was all pre-mobile phone and taking photographs wasn’t so easy. I used a disposable camera I bought from Boots. It could take up to 24 or so pictures. If you got one wrong, well it was wrong! There was also no way to adjust focus, just point and shoot. You’ll see my blurry fingers and poor focus in some of the images. Plus, all of these images are scans of physical prints, which both makes them appear even older and a little less sharp.
I tweeted some of my pictures of the ‘old days’ in the run up to Glastonbury 2019. From the comments I received it struck me these pictures captured something of the history of the festival. They document an arc of time when the hippy roots of the event were beginning to slip away and Indie and Dance Music were in the ascendancy - which did not go without criticism and accusations of selling out at the time!
I would always spend a chunk of time at each festival walking around on my own. That’s why the images are not of my friends (though they appear very occasionally) but of people, places and moments that simply struck me as interesting.
One final caveat. My pictures were quite literally stored in a dusty box in my attic. Some were mixed up. Some I’ve guessed the dates. So apologies if I’m not always accurate.
And there are no selfies. They hadn’t been invented.
See what you think! Happy to take comments. If you have any old photographs then I’d be happy to share!
Click on the cover to take you through to Amazon.
My novel - Festival: before the rains came
Ideas and little stories came to me every time I went to Glastonbury. I started to jot them down and expand on them. Sometimes writing at the festival, but mainly in that dead zone of ‘real life’ between festivals. It all came to this book celebrating a large English festival sometime in the 1990s.
Now its out there published by Turntable Press and Publishing. Here are the reviews:
“Before the Rains Came is a perfect fictionalisation of a festival weekend…”
“If you weren't there back in the day, well, the spirit is here for you, enjoy....”
Here’s the blurb:
A very large field in England in the early 1990s. The world's biggest music and arts festival is about to begin. In the burning heat of an impossibly hot summer three different sets of friends arrive as they always have. Some come for the music, some come for the spirits and some come just to be with their friends. They set camp, dance till dawn, watch bands, fall in and out of love, meditate, remember the dead, celebrate the living, and wander the highways and byways of a canvas city that rises and falls in five days.