The Insane Clown Posse
I have returned from my favorite yearly photographic adventure, The Gathering of the Juggalos. I have returned with some sort of insane juggalo virus and have slept about 25 hours out of the last 36. In the remaning 11 hours I have edited all 7000 photos down to about 1700 and sent everything off to clients and organized everything into roughly 30 galleries that I will be posting between now and when I go on a much needed vacation next Wednesday.
For those of you who are somehow out of the loop, the Gathering of the Juggalos is a music festival in Cave In Rock, IL right by the Ohio river on the border of Illinois and Kentucky. To get there I drove three and a half hours from St. Louis through back roads. There is no cell service and no cops. You are in the wild with thousands and thousands of kids in clown make up. This is my third year at the Gathering and the first time there was a serious media presence. There was a WIFI network set up and it felt a little less dangerous than in the past but it’s still a wild fucking place.
This year I was actually hired by Psychopathic Records as the official in house photographer and I got some great access and I think I ended up with my best pictures yet. You can be the judge but I am pretty happy with the photos.
I thought we would start this off with the big Insane Clown Posse show held on Saturday night of the five day weekend. Say what you will about the Insane Clown Posse’s music, but they put on one of the best live shows I have ever seen. I talked to several members of the media who had never seen them before and they were all blown away by how good it was. Even if you hate ICP I can’t imagine you wouldn’t leave their show impressed.
ICP is also one of the hardest bands to photograph because they pour Faygo cola all over everyone. I was prepared with rain gear but I still had to leave the photo pit every few songs to clean off my lens. Even then my rain gear would get pushed too far over my lens and I ended up with vignetting which actually kinda looks cool in a few shots.
At the end of every Insane Clown Posse show they have what they call the “Faygo Armageddon” where they invite everyone back stage on to stage to throw all the remaining Faygo onto the crowd. I got to do it last year and it was honestly one of the most fun moments of my life. This year I had to document the thing so I went to the back of the stage and just kept firing off shots. I probably took 300 photos of one song and few of them came out because I was just firing and praying stuff would look good. I probably should have switched to auto mode for it but I was mostly just trying not to get hit with enough Faygo to destroy my camera. In the end I got some truly amazing shots of the thing and had a blast in the process. My camera even made it out in pretty good shape.
Now I think it is finally time to look at some pictures! There will be a LOT more coming soon!
The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.
