Alan Lodge.
Stonehenge.
Southport, United Kingdom: Cafe Royal Books, 2020.
Staple-bound softcover.
36 pages.
Black & White.
The Free Festival Movement of the 1970s took the UK by storm, offering a mélange of music, arts, and cultural activities at no cost. Beginning with Woodstock in 1969, the possibility of creating a mini utopia became a dream come true – that was until they became too popular, and the state got involved.
"Free Festivals developed from people being fed up with the exploitation, rules, squalor and overall rip-off that so many events had become. They discovered something… a powerful vision,” says British photographer Alan Lodge.
“People lived together: a community sharing possessions, listening to great music, making do, living with the environment, consuming their needs and little else,” Lodge says. “Life on the road in an old £300 1960s bus, truck or trailer seemed like a bloody good option, weighed against the prospect of life on the dole in some grotty city under the Tory Government.”
Café Royal Books (founded 2005) is an independent
publisher based in Southport, England.
Originally set up as a way to disseminate art,
in multiple, affordably, quickly, and internationally
while not relying on 'the gallery'.
Café Royal Books publishes artist's books and zines
as well as a weekly series of photobook/zines.
The photographic publications are part of a long
ongoing series, generally working with photographers
and their archives, to publish work, which usually falls
into 1970–2000 UK documentary / reportage.
