Holy Ground

For a few days each summer, a field in northern Germany becomes a world of its own. Thousands of people arrive carrying the signs of a shared culture on their bodies: tattoos, patches, piercings, skulls and hand gestures. Together, they form a modern tribe with its own visual language and codes of belonging.

I was interested in the rituals that bind this community together. Bodies are pushed, lifted, carried and thrown into the crowd. Strangers depend on one another.

Holy Ground looks as a place of belonging, somewhere between spectacle and intimacy, aggression and play, individuality and collective release at Wacken Open Air, one of the world’s largest heavy metal festivals. Beneath the visual language of toughness lies a desire to recognise one another and to be recognised as part of something.