VIA PRESS RELEASE | James Marcus Haney, the LA based photographer and director of the acclaimed music documentary No Cameras Allowed announces the release of his first photo book, Fanatics.
Haney pulls together photographs of fans from his time touring with Coldplay, Elton John, and Mumford & Sons, alongside the countless festivals and shows he’s been to right across the world. Capturing the spirit and sheer elation of witnessing live music with friends, the book features imagery from concerts in 35 different countries, spanning the decade of 2010-2020.
Accompanying these images are stories and testimonials from musicians Haney has toured alongside, including Chris Martin of Coldplay, Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe, Maggie Rogers, Lars Ulrich from Metallica, Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, Albert Hammond JR of The Strokes and many more, all talking about the importance of fans and anecdotes and memories of their own as fans themselves. The book opens with a foreword penned by Elton John, who Haney has also been out on the road with.
Explaining the inspiration behind the book, Haney recalls: “Back when I was in college, I couldn’t afford to go to music festivals so I would sneak into them with my friends. Often, I used a ‘borrowed’ camera from school and posed as a press photographer. I filmed all the bands I loved and used the guise of a fake press pass to get as close to the stage as possible.
After a few festivals, I cut together a short documentary of my friends and I sneaking into Coachella and Bonnaroo. At another show, I handed a roadie a burnt DVD copy of my short doc, who then passed it onto the band he was teching for, Mumford & Sons. Soon, I found myself on an old-school vintage train chugging across America with Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show as part of the Railroad Revival Tour.
“My passion for touring came at a cost though: as my time on the road coincided with my final exams at film school. I forfeited a college degree but made some of the best friends of my life and embarked on a career adventure that I could never have dreamed of. Through touring the world with artists like Mumford & Sons, Elton John, and Coldplay, I was able to immerse into all sorts of cultures and musical worlds and all sorts of wild crowds and fans. I found myself taking photos of fans everywhere—there was something so captivating about watching people completely lost in the music, witnessing that spiritual experience.
“This book is a culmination of a decade of touring the world and the truckload of film negatives that have amassed in that time. It captures the emotions, fashions, and faces of the 2010 decade through live music. And it is only now, from the depths of pandemic, do these photographs remind us of a time, so recent yet so different, and represent the ultimate experience to look forward to again.”
Words on Fanatics by Elton John | Fanatics is a book that celebrates that dedication, that music fan’s rite of passage, what you might call the magical festival spirit. It’s partly the sense that you can do whatever you want—get drunk, get high, have sex, whatever—at least for a weekend. And it’s partly that the one thing that’s bonding everyone together at a festival is the love of music. You can see that spirit, that common humanity, in the photos in this book.
“Marcus has captured that indomitable festival spirit brilliantly through these photographs. With his trusted camera in hand, he’s the ultimate fly on the wall, or the fly on the canvas of the tent. He seizes these moments, almost like the invisible man, catching people in every imaginable state—in rapture and in decay, the ecstasy and the agony.”
