Lowlands special ’08

Sommaire

• We’ll sleep at home. The Festival Feeling in the Netherlands and Belgium
• Photo Booth

  A gazebo, four camping chairs, burning candles on the table and a front garden comprising of six plastic sunflowers. In his improvised studio backstage Krijn van Noordwijk didn’t meet the minor artists. And the more colourful it was outside, the darker it was in the ‘booth’. The result: subtle profiles plucked out of the darkness. Not only Krijn but you too come face to face with the ‘big names of Lowlands’. www.krijnvannoordwijk.com

• Pushing Limits

  Two years ago the pop photographer-on-a-timeout, Gijsbert Hanekroot (1945), turned up on SYB Design’s doorstep with two plastic bags full to the brim with photos; vintage prints in all the formats you can possibly imagine. Did SYB fancy designing a book? Well, Hanekroot did and the designer just so happened to be in.

  par Pim Milo
• Portfolio Elza Jo

  We bumped into Elza Jo many times at Lowlands in the past. Not that she can remember anything about those meetings, but hey, she wasn’t working at the time... She was there last year too, all sober – unlike us. That gave us an inkling of hope so we asked her to come with us this year. Brilliant! Not that we saw her or anything, she recorded her own version of Lowlands, of which we were evidently no part. After taking the photos, she let her cut, paste and drawing skills loose on a few of them. www.elzajo.com

• Story Lines

  New Yorker Barry Kornbluh got his first Leica in the 80’s. He walked the streets of the big apple shooting interesting stuff that, in Barry’s case, could be anything, anywhere. Street energy was the thing that made him tick. In the 90’s he moved to Amsterdam and found it difficult to detect those New York atmospheres. We invited him to Lowlands because of his distinct and abstract style of photography. And guess what happened, Barry retrieved a sense of New York just outside Biddinghuizen. A kind of freedom. Anonymous in the crowd. Shooting away. Everyone carefree.

• Portfolio Otto Snoek

  €“Sid Vicious would turn in his grave if he could see the punks lining up for their coins like a bunch of church-goers.” Photographer Otto Snoek is amazed that all the sub-cultures at Lowlands melt together so happily to form one big festival going crowd. He is interested in moments that give a photograph something quirky. Are these kind of moments served up on a platter at Lowlands? Well, yeah, if you reckon a mohawk or a group of hoodies donning Ray-Ban Wayfarers is thrilling enough. Snoek doesn’t – that would be too easy. No, he prefers to observe people and wait for that moment that deserves a second glance. www.ottosnoek.com Portfolio Otto Snoek All images © Otto Snoek 72 —

• Music in my mind

  She knew what she wanted to be when she was fifteen years old: a photographer. That she would mainly do so in the music scene was unbeknown to her. Titia Hahne often gets sent out on behalf of the Dutch music magazine OOR. Well, now for GUP and Lowlands too. At Lowlands she was in photo heaven: Artists and bands in abundance. She is up to the challenge and proves it here with her mighty black and white work from the most colourful festival in Holland. www.titiahahne.nl

• Portfolio Simone Bär

  She went looking for the faces of Lowlands. In the morning, when a serene peace still draped the festival terrain and in the afternoon when a bussling crowd sprawled across it. Simone Bär took festivalgoer’s portraits with her Hasselblad H3D 39. Isolated from the masses for one moment before they launch themselves back into the crowds. Lucid and formidable images, not unlike the Lowlanders themselves. www.simonebar.nl

• It is what it is

  When Boudewijn goes out and about with his camera, it’s a case of waiting to see where he ends up. Observe how each photo outdoes the last. Unexpected is a fitting description for Bollmann’s photos. He roamed and snooped around the entire festival from the campsite to Higher Ground, to catch meticulous – and often enough ludicrous – quirky festival scenes. For this is what Lowlands is... www.twistedstreets.nl

• Portfolio Dennis Duijnhouwer

  We gave Dennis a call somewhere back in June to ask if he wanted to come to Lowlands with us. He was up for it, but first he had to go on a road trip across the States. He reassured us he’d be back on time. We had a deal. Nevertheless on Wednesday the 13th of August he still wasn’t back and we couldn’t get hold of him... until Friday when around 3 a big old beard came a-wandering onto the Lowlands site. It was Dennis, fresh off the plane with an amazing case of jet lag. His symptoms were classic: He couldn’t sleep at night and wanted nothing more during the day. On Saturday he was so knackered that, when he set his Yashica camera down and plonked himself on the toilet, he forgot to pick it up again on his way out. The one who coined it got a load of cool pictures as well as a cool camera... the rest can be seen here. www.dennisduijnhouwer.com