Woodstock 1969. Nicky and Bobby. A young couple who attended the seemingly popular music festival held in the Catskill Mountains of Bethel, New York. This photograph resembles the peace that some find at festivals, but most importantly love. Love with music, love with one another, and in most cases, love with drugs. Music festivals across the world have a strong drug-related stigma attached to them. Growing up as the daughter of two extreme Dead-Head’s, I have overheard thousands of stories of festivals in the late 1900’s. Not only were drugs a large part of the festival go-er’s experience, but also the musicians. A well-known example of this was when lead singer and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, died from accidental overdose in 1995.  His fan base was deeply rooted within the drug scene and that is what made their music so “special and experimental” as they might say.

I chose to focus on this picture because it stood out to me as a shot with hidden significance or a subliminal meaning. Especially now, with the influx of drugs flooding my generation, when someone sees this photo, they think of drugs. I chose to manipulate this image to show the true colors of so many generations perspectives of this image. The ground is covered in tabs of hallucinogens and bags of cocaine, while the sky is what one might consider a “trippy” image, all representing what the people laying down are feeling. I chose to put an aura around Nicky and Bobby symbolizing the high they are feeling, that from music, love, and drugs. It is as though you are entering an alternate universe, which signifies the feeling of the experience Woodstock might give.

Photos used:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-woodstock-moment-40-years-later-33569550/