festnoise | Music & Festivals

Jul 1

Jul 1 5 great Music Festival Photographers

Curious, discreet and always waiting to capture those magical moments. Photographers are an essential part of music festivals. Complicit in what happens there, often closer to the stage than anyone else, they work tirelessly to leave us memories of unique and unrepeatable moments.

Used to traveling from festival to festival, many of them have now been affected by Covid-19 and its dramatic consequences for the music industry too. There are many talented photographers out there doing a great job, as an example this article where I have included five of them whose work I enjoy very much. In addition, during this Summer without live music, I will be publishing short interviews with those who in one way or another are part of the music festivals that we love so much, among which, of course, some of these great photographers will be included.

Tanya Volt

Coming from Australia, this talented and young photographer has a unique way to use color that I love. Elaborated and perfectly edited photographs. Quality before quantity. Tanya works mainly in Melbourne, where she lives and has photographed lots of new indie bands but also names such as Arcade Fire or Kanye West. She describes herself as “a people watcher and listener of music of the indie-rock persuasion”. Someone can bring her to Europe, please?

Find more photographs and more information on her official website.

Matias Altbach

Based in Buenos Aires from September to May, this Argentinien photographer has been spending the last Summers going from one music festival to another. With an eye to capture the crowd, his career took off when in 2014 he won the NME Photography Awards in the Professional category with the cover photograph of this article. He has covered more than 40 festivales in America and Europe and has worked for artists such as The Libertines, Glass Animals, Pete Doherty, The Hives, Foals, The Kills, Bomba Estéreo, Tom Misch or Ofenbach!

Find more photographs and more information on his official website.

Pooneh Ghana

Who hasn't seen her amazing photos of Matt Shultz at Coachella? It is true that the frontman of Cage The Elephant is one of those artists who give you tons of material, but despite her young age, Pooneh has been hopping from festival to festival and touring with different bands already for a while now since she started shooting Polaroids at live shows in Austin. With a unique style, every effort has its reward and Pooneh is today a renowned photographer that has been featured in NME, Rolling Stone or Pitchfork.

Find more photographs and more information on her official website.

Bartek Muracki

Son to a painter and a musician, he assures becoming a music photographer was not a choice. Y quizás mejor porque este joven music photojournalist has a talent for shooting live performances and capturing the vibe of the concert and its audience. Since 2013 he works as a staff photographer for the Woodstock music festival in Poland.

Find more photographs and more information on his official website.

Kimberley Ross

Kimberley has spent the last Summers in the European music festival circuit. Running from stage to stage catching as many acts as she can, she claims to find more and more interesting what goes on in between and at the edges of the shows. Her pictures of Roskilde are a good example. The Italian photographer has an overwhelming amount of impressive photographs of artists such as Billie Eilish, Linkin Park, Green Day, Phoenix and many more.