at night | die nacht
Photography and Rave: How the Medium Exposes Experience

What started out in the late-1980s as youth subculture set to the sound of a new genre of music, a series of repetitive beats played at tempos of 115-150 beats per minute (BPM) with a 4/4 or four on the floor beat peddling the sound, house and techno music has since become a dominate style of music in the 21st century. The electronic music industry is a billion-dollar industry that rivals other forms of popular music. With its roots in Black America, Detroit and Chicago with their decaying infrastructure, the sound quickly found itself in underground scenes across the globe. It particularly thrived in Europe where cities were either facing periods of conservatism ( late-80s United Kingdom) or post-Cold War liberation (a reunified Germany, early-90s). Electronic music is revolutionary, and its accompanying nightlife of rave embodies both humanism and anarchy as people spend their nights descending into utter liberation and hedonism. To go to a rave is a sensation difficult to capture with words. It is an ephemeral experience where the human senses are overwhelmed with loud music, movement, light, shadows, sweat, and drugs or alcohol. As a subculture at the turn of the century, at the forefront of a boom in digital technologies (cameras, cell phones, drum machines, and other DJ equipment) photography became popular medium used to capture what a night out dancing could look like. Rave photography consisted of fragmented still-image, originally serving the purpose of personal snapshots to fill the gaps of an unforgettable (although, paradoxically, often forgotten) night out raving. Rave photography has become a genre of its own as these personal photographs have since became documents for those studying the subculture, while promotional images have also been used by those working in the electronic music industry. By analyzing these photographs, the gaps in understanding raving can potentially be addressed, however partially, through images that supply evidence of the subculture’s style, and the feelings of freedom and intimacy that these spaces present. Rave is a diverse culture and in its journey of cultural expansion, across the Atlantic and then back, in the era of globalization, it has only become more complex producing an overground or mainstream style of nightlife, while also retaining some of its underground parties and values. In particular Brooklyn, New York, a scene that has flourished over the last decade is in constant interaction with these nuances. To place itself on the international stage, it borrows community policies such as strict door selection or banning the use of photography from European clubs, for spaces that play more underground variations of electronic music, in addition to mainstay overground venues that cater more to the general public or people who are just starting to get into house and techno. This paper explores the history and characterizations of these spaces and the implications of the language used around and within them, through a visual analysis of rave photography and imagery that translates the ephemeral experience of raving.

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