Reading Festival 2023 was a sight to behold, a gloriously cacophonous, muddy, bewitching weekend in which music ruled and baggy-fitting roller shirts were worn, but mainly music. With headline maestros including Billie Eilish, The 1975, and The Killers blazing a trail across the main stages, the atmosphere felt positively charged. But if you could look past the layers of spectacle and sweat, something even more transcendent was going on behind the curtain.
That's where the photographer Ben McQuaide came in quietly, delicately, and with that rare eye for honesty. As the audience roared, McQuaide slipped behind the curtains into an experience that was stripped down, intimate, and wonderfully honest.
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His behind-the-scenes photographs from Reading 2013 and Reading 2011 are more than photographs. They're small windows into the emotional undercurrent of the weekend, the nerves before a set, the breath immediately after. These are the things you don't see from behind the barrier, and they are just as important, if not more so, than the fireworks.
Used to being mayhem themselves, live, Ben snapped him mid-laugh in a rare moment of calm before they'd roll out onto the packed floor like a tornado. Cool in the classic mold, Bakar also knew how to stand as if he knew perfectly well the storm he was about to unleash. And then there's Meekz, whose silent swagger in the frame spoke louder than any lyric.
On this day, the genre-resistant ball of energy that is Midwxst takes a rare moment of reflection, his eyes reading like the story of an artist still processing how broken things can turn into opportunities that roll at the speed of the world. Caity Baser asked, bold and herself, glowed the kind of radiant buzz that only comes from knowing you're smashing it.
There was then Only The Poets, a band on a steady climb up the indie ladder. How McQuaide paints the two of them sounds like a page from a diary, brotherhood, faith, and a hint of disbelief at how far they have come. Vistas brought a welcome warm-up to the lens, the thrill of your favorite band walking on stage and playing that one song you needed to hear.
Twst's image screams defiance and art school edge, a performer who wears her creativity like both a shield and a sword. And Bellah Mae, poised and real, exuded that unexplainable kind of charm that is impossible to fake, even in the glow of a festival trailer's fluorescent lighting.
There's always been more to reading than the headliners, though. It is where careers crackle to life, where opening acts become next year's poster toppers. Ben McQuaide's portraits serve as a reminder that music doesn't just exist in the sound but also in the silence between sounds, in the breath before the beat drops, and in the way a young artist looks down a lens as if they already know they belong behind it.
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