OFFstage
To celebrate its fifth anniversary in 2019, the Transylvanian festival Untold allowed us to roam its 370,000‑strong gathering to document, through our lens, four days and nights of magic. Published in 2020, OFFstage also exists as an audiobook, narrated by actress Ana Ularu.
An Artist Book
to Re-live Music
An artbook for an electronic music festival? Even Untold was a bit skeptical. But eventually, living up to their name, Romania’s largest music event agreed to tell the untold story of live music gatherings.
Moving the mic off the stage, this book chronicles the unscripted happenings of festival crowds. A visual and sensorial journal, it reveals the unseen performances taking place out of the spotlight. OFFstage, using typography and photography as rhythm, is infused with everything Untolders feel, smell, taste, and touch. It tells the epic story of hundreds of thousands of human souls sharing a live moment.
Approaching this project, we felt that the importance of festivals in both human history and contemporary times is widely understated. From folklore and religious gatherings dating back thousands of years to international music festivals uniting millions of people, the universality of such ephemeral events are testaments of something immensely powerful. Our goal was to fill this historical void, breaking barriers between performers and the public, recognizing musicians as artists, and bridging (so-called) high and low culture.
