Cleo Campert

Each year about 700 festivals are held in the Netherlands, it has become a music festival country. Audiences embrace partying outdoors; the nightlife has gained a well-developed daytime division.
Cleo Campert photographed the nightlife since the late eighties, in her reportage photography she has always focused on people. Now in Festivalland she lets the surroundings play a major role, inspired by landscape paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. Campert has captured the culture of festivals with the changing landscape as a starting point. In Festivalland are portraits and mainly landscapes, taken during and after the festival, all from the same position. Exploring the differences between the landscape with and without the festivals, Campert visited 19 festivals like Lowlands, Mysteryland and Pinkpop. The landscape without the festival is a Festival of the Elements with the rising and setting sun, clouds, mist and rain as its effects. Photographing the festival landscapes is a way to show the human lure of the culturally determined unity with nature.