Home Archive About Accessibility Glastonbury 2011 Photo Project
Intro The Earlies Gates Open Shangri La Saturday The Balloon Lady Saturday Night Glorious Sunday Leaving
IntroductionMy first Glastonbury was in 1989. I was 23, and it was a scary and powerful experience for me. I didn't go back again until 2000, paying for my ticket by working three shifts as a litter picker. 2000 was the last crazy year, before they put the 'super fence' in. There might have been around 400,000 people on the site, and there was a lot of violence - even one or two shootings. The local council read the riot act, and Michael Eavis, the organiser, took a fallow year the following year and made plans to change the festival forever.
2002 was the first year of the super fence. There was trouble outside, but not inside this impenetrable wall of steel and watchtowers and patrols and cctv. That was my first year working for Oxfam - as a festival steward. You paid a deposit on your ticket, worked 3x8 hour shifts during the festival, and provided you turned up and did the work you got your deposit back afterwards. You got a nice and relatively secure place to camp, right by the farm where Mr Eavis lived, with showers and catering and a bar.
Oxfam had been providing stewards to the festival since the mid-Nineties, and I was lucky to catch them when I did. We have grown as a team - not just in numbers (around 2,000 at Glastonbury), but in the volume of other festivals who employ us, and the way we work and train. I have grown too. This is the great secret in life - to keep changing and growing. It's taken me 45 years to realise it.
I've done different jobs at Glastonbury over the years, sometimes as a steward or supervisor on one of the vehicle or pedestrian gates, sometimes directing road traffic, or working in the campervan fields outside the fence.
In 2011 I was working the 'Early Shift' as a lowly steward on Vehicle Gate 5, on the Northern edge of the festival site. The Early Shift is much sought after. We get down on the site on the Saturday before the festival, and our 3 shifts are finished by the Wednesday when the gates open and the Glastonbury 'officially' starts. Most of the other stewards arrive on the Monday and Tuesday, and work the main shift from Wednesday morning until Sunday night when the gates are decommissioned and the festival officially closes.
I used my second DSLR, a Canon 20D with a 17x55mm lens. I carried it around in a sealed 5ltr 'Dri Bag' I bought from Funky Leisure in Twickenham - safely tucked away in a Lowepro Classified 160 AW Shoulder Bag.
I love this camera, not least because it feels beautiful to hold. Compared to my 7D it's very light and seems to fit my hands perfectly. It's built like a tank, has a handy macro feature (which I didn't use) and a built-in flash (which I used rarely).
Before I left I had a fair hunch that the sensor on the camera would need cleaning manually. I took a few test shots against a grey sky but couldn't see any tell-tale dark spots on the photos. I was pressed for time and packed the camera. Deep down, I knew I would have a problem with 'dust bunnies' when it came to post-processing, but I had a vague idea I might be able to fix them up in Photoshop afterwards.
Shooting
styleMy Oxfam friend Rob turned up on the Tuesday. We had a few drinks and I talked about what I hoped to do with the photos. Rob felt that I should 'shoot from the hip' - Lomographic style - and publish the photos completely unedited. That's not my style. I like to look, to watch, to observe, to position myself and to take many composed shots of the same changing scene (changing clouds, changing people, changing light) in the hope that I capture a detail which engages me.
After talking to Rob, I found myself loosen up a little - especially when the conditions were so bad that formal composition was hopeless. Pressing crowds, slippery mud, pitch darkness, the fear of pissing someone off and being half-cut a lot of the time meant that I was shooting from the hip more often than usual. True enough, when conditions were good (especially on the Sunday) I 'played' the photographer; moving, posing, finding angles, looking for colour and sharpness and often seized with a sense of excitement and urgency and purpose.
On my return, back in London, I saw that some of the best photos were damaged with visible dust beyond my ability to repair easily (although it's doable). Given the volume of the shoot (around 2,000), the nature of what I had been left with and the emotion I felt about the whole project, Rob's idea of leaving them untouched seemed more compelling. So I owe that mostly to him.
I decide, the day I get back, that the way to do this is to publish a selection of the 2,000 in chronological order and completely unedited. Portrait photos have been rotated in Windows Media Viewer - so they are orientated correctly. Nothing has been put through Photoshop. Nothing has been cropped, sharpened, enhanced, retouched, resized etc. Well, almost nothing; the two photos on this page have been cropped and resized, and the thumbnails on the other pages had to be resized. That is all. What you see is what I took, only that you get the best of everything here - at least based on my selection.
With the photos is some accompanying text - in the vain hope that I could build a better picture of what this place is like. I don't think I can. If you've only seen Glastonbury on the TV, or read about it in the papers, you really have no idea what the place is like. Part of the post depression syndrome we all go through is the complete breakdown in communication with people back home who want to know what bands you saw on the Pyramid Stage. These people, I think, have it in their head that all we do is wander down to the Pyramid every day, watch some bands, and go back to our tents. They don't realise there are hundreds of stages and venues, hundreds of wandering and ad-hoc performances, in over 1,000 acres of fenced off land. It's a magical place that takes your breath away. And for a few days, the fourth largest city in the West Country.
Somehow, I hope this can give you a different idea, if not a better idea. Maybe it'll make you think about going yourself.
Chris Light, July 2011
Next: The Earlies
