I love the Big Thief portrait I captured last summer. I went to meet them in their green room and they were getting ready for their set: doing push ups, playing guitar, half of them still shirtless and Max in a mermaid tail. Instead of dressing up, everyone went topless for the shoot.
One of the things I love about music festivals is walking around the grounds and picking out people who are totally in the moment, whether it's through their fashion sense or just the way they inspire it all. This is what I saw in an attendee named Kevin Roberts leaning against a tree wearing his vintage Pitchfork 2022 t-shirt. Kevin was taken aback when I approached him for a photo, but when I told him I was at the festival he obliged and posed without posing at all . I enjoyed the moment, then moved on to my next task and only thought about the image again when I was winding down my day, filling my “atmosphere” folder with festival looks.
Pitchfork is releasing a “best of” compilation early next week and tagged me in a Twitter post about it. I woke up to quite a few mentions, which was unusual for my very low profile Twitter account. Behold, the portrait of Kevin Roberts was taking off. My initial fears were that he was being mocked, but to my pleasant surprise, the comments were full of people praising him for being what we all secretly want to be at a festival: just a content, hands-in-pocket, music-loving attendee. They called him the “Pitchfork Guy.” We often succumb to the anxiety of appearance and perception, but the Kevin Roberts method is much easier.
