Juggalo Portraits At The Gathering
So I survived another Gathering of the Juggalos. If you somehow don’t know about the Gathering it is a festival in the middle of fucking no where called Cave In Rock, IL run by the Insane Clown Posse and their record label Psychopathic Records. Traditionally it’s one of the best hip hop festivals in the country with classic artists playing to very different crowds on small stages surrounded by kids who don’t even give a fuck because they are just there to see Psychopathic Records bands. It’s the kinda situation where Ice Cube opens up for Blaze Ya Dead Homie.
This year Psychopathic switched it up a bit, they tried an experiment by getting rid of the huge artists and stuck to underground artists that most people who aren’t juggalos have never heard of. Not sure it was the best decision as the festival wasn’t as well attended and it seemed like with less shit to do juggalos took even more drugs than normal and there were a lot of overdoses and a kid died and a kid cut off his own nipples and supposedly someone ate their own tongue. I saw more fights this year than I have in all the other years combined. Dark forces were hovering over the Gathering this year.
Still, it’s a wild fucking time and I took several thousand photos. I was covering the festival for the Village Voice, Rolling Stone and Hustler, plus Gawker ran some of my images in exchange for a place to stay. I shot a “Girls of the Gathering” feature for Hustler so I can’t post any of that stuff until after it comes out, but those photos are pretty awesome. Of the rest of the stuff, I have 1100 photos to post and I hope to get most of it online before I go on vacation Thursday. Let’s see how much I get done.
So if you haven’t seen my Gathering of the Juggalos photos before you need to click this link and scroll through the archives. And after that take a moment to look at these portraits from the Gathering. These are generally my favorite shots from the festival and a good way to open my coverage. I got band stuff coming next and then we will get to the other madness and finally end with a dump of everything else. So if I took your photo at the Gathering and you don’t see it here… don’t worry, it’s coming!
what month is your gathering of the juggalos feature supposed to be in hustler magazine ?
I think it’s in the April issue which will be out in like January because magazine publishing is fucking confusing.