Homer Sykes.
Stonehenge 1970s Counterculture.
Southport, United Kingdom: Cafe Royal Books, 2019.
Staple-bound softcover.
28 pages.
Second printing.
First printed 2013.
Black & White.
This book collects Homer Sykes’s photographs of counterculture activities at Stonehenge in the 1970s. Sykes first made his reputation photographing British folk festivals, and later went on to work as a photographer for several magazines and to document various counterculture movements. These photographs document the hippy, neopagan, and New Age communities that gathered around Stonehenge each June for several years at the Stonehenge Free Festival. The festival finally came to an end in 1985, when 1,300 police descended upon a caravan of six hundred travelers approaching Stonehenge, arresting 537 people in “the UK’s largest mass arrest since the second world war,” beating and hospitalizing dozens of peaceful civilians in an incident known as the “Battle of the Beanfield.”
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.
