Photography by Michael C. Thorpe.
Turnstile, the hardcore band from Baltimore, played a free show at the monument in Washington DC this weekend. The free event was organized as a fundraiser for humanitarian relief in Palestine, Sudan, and Lebanon, a set of causes which we feel very strongly about.
As it turns out, our friends Michael and C are friends with the band, and were heading down south to attend, and so naturally, we asked them to snap some photos of whatever. What they came back with were photos from the pit, some blurry, some beautiful, but what I like most about this collection of photography is that they are undoubtedly candid. There is no posing visible, nobody there to see and be seen. They're smeared and often unclean, but real, and varied.
Children on parents’ shoulders, C in the grass, protesters carrying signs, music fans rushing to a rhythm. These are ugly beautiful moments captured in a haze from a pit swirling with people frustrated by the impossible violence and vileness of the world and who feel helpless to do anything about it. Subversively uncommercial and all full of joy, very few instances of culture in the era of AI and Instagram are so absent of superficiality. These photos are one of those instances.
