Capturing the Rave, In Conversation with Natasha Lucas-Harniman

By Poppy Gooch

@natashaharniman – founder + image maker, Bristol.

Natasha Harniman is a Bristol-based photographer and videographer, and the founder and director of the exhibition project ‘Generation Electric’. She maintains a focus on both fashion and events, with a particular immersion in the dance and music scenes. She has been featured in VICE, Crack, and Notion, and her success at the age of only 21 is astounding.

You can find her and her projects on Instagram at @lazyeyesart, @natashaharniman, and @generationelectricexhibition.

It was a warm Friday evening in mid August, and I had driven to Malvern, my closest town, to meet an old friend. When we started discussing the possibility of platforming artists in The Lucky Penny, I knew immediately that I had to get in touch with Nat. We were close friends in high school, and even back then, she always had a camera on her. She produced many a frazzled, drunken photo of me and our fellow party-goers, and pictures were always, unquestionably, her ’thing’.

She doesn’t often return to the countryside, but her partner was running an event through his co-founded, dance-based sound system/record label, Tribal Audio UK. I arrived before the night had started, and entered the Old Con Club; I met the crew, DJ’s, and friends of the organisers, who were all exceptionally friendly. As the music started blaring, and pensioners stared, baffled, through the open courtyard gate, we decided that it would be best to conduct the interview in a nearby church-yard. This article will be constructed from our extended and fascinating conversation.

It was a delight to reconnect with Nat, and I learned a great deal about her city’s industry and wider music scene. Bristol, with its deep pool of ravers and creatives, seems utopian, an infinite, churning cycle of collaboration, trade, and mutual support. It has been the inevitable destination of so many of my small-town friends, and it isn’t at all difficult to see why. For its youth in particular, there seems to be a shared understanding of the need to produce and consume art almost constantly, from morning to night and often straight through again. This is the primary focus for many of its citizens, a focus that I greatly admire.

The issue remains, however, that this wondrous, exciting, communal lifestyle, may not be sustainable. With the continual cutting of university and council arts budgets, and the growing impossibility of running an independent business, will this idealistic space soon be a thing of the past? Nat and I share a belief in the importance of facilitating entry into the creative industries for all: the arts should never be exclusive to the wealthy and connected. Yet with the prevalent expectation to work for exposure rather than a fair wage, and a level of stagnation in the careers of many, will our generation’s most talented end up confined to unhappy jobs? Joy and entertainment are worthy products of labour, and we cannot allow our passions to be squandered under the guise of practicality and contribution to the state.

My first questions for Nat surrounded her entry into the photography industry. She told me that the only route towards any kind of creative career, is to become acquainted with the right people: “my boyfriend owns a rig, and through him I got to know others in the field.” We

discussed how nobody within her professional and social sphere is singularly talented. One is never just a model or a musician, but a designer, an organiser, and a skilled technician too: “If you move to Bristol you have to be a certain type of person, one who wants to do a bit of everything.”

As the conversation continued, we delved further into this cooperative, multi-layered system. “A lot of the fashion shoots I do, I don’t have the budget to give everyone, including myself, a fair wage, so they’re all a collaboration for our portfolios, a way to bring awareness to new creators. I wouldn’t be able to do any of the shoots that I do if people weren’t up for that.” This led us to the subject of pay and credit, and I was curious to know if this was always given fairly. “It really depends”, she said. “I don’t accept free work anymore unless it would benefit me. The whole exposure thing just doesn’t do anything for me at this stage. I shot a festival last year and it was one that I was going to go to anyway, but I got two free tickets and a yurt for the whole weekend, so it is sometimes fair. On the flip side, sometimes people do take the piss. Its good because you get to set your own rates, but it is difficult to know how much your work is worth. I have to think about expenses and insurance and stuff.”

From here, we moved on to the topic of gender within the industry, and the discrepancies over earnings for women and people of colour. “Most of the Bristol scene is female so that’s really good, but misogyny is one hundred percent a prevalent issue. When you start going further and further, you realise that there are a lot more male photographers. Snooty men will come up to you and be like ‘ah, what are you shooting on’, just to test that you know your kit. I remember I shot a festival that was in Newport, and it had some larger artists. I did not see any female photographers, or one photographer of colour. It definitely needs improving, but at the underground level, its pretty good”.

Before asking into the specifics of her shoots, I had one last question about her lifestyle. “It may seem like a silly thing to ask”, I said, “but have you made friends through your work?” “As much as photography seems really energetic and like you get to go to events every night”, she replied, “it can be very lonely when you’re sober, and you’re sat there with people who aren’t, but I have made so many amazing friends.”

This leads me, inevitably, back to the central idea of community. Nat is not an outsider, entering into ravers’ spaces and taking pictures from a distant perspective. She dresses like the attendees, loves the music, and occupies the scene whilst off the clock too. Even in her sobriety, Nat’s capacity to integrate herself into the crowd is in my opinion, the thing that makes her work so great. She is not an old white man in a suit, stepping on toes and alienating her subjects, and to the blurred vision of someone in their third, sixth, or twelfth hour of dancing, she is just another friendly face, a face embedded within the subculture. I feel this too about her existence as a female creative: the comfort provided to other women surely makes for better results. I inquired about this, and she agreed: “A lot of people come up to me and tell me they love my work, and it is mostly women who do that. It’s more open. A lot of male photographers take pictures through the male gaze, and that’s not something I’m interested in”.

Of course, Nat’s identity is important to her work, but her images would be nothing without her incredible talent. I wanted to know more about her process, about how these astounding pictures came to be. What is immediately striking about her portfolio is her ability to capture movement, to maintain rhythm in a static medium. “Long exposure is the main thing”, she said. “It works really well. I try to focus mostly on the people, because they’re the ones moving”, she laughed. I then asked about her rules for a successful shoot: “I am so on it. I’m a bit of a control freak because I know that so much can go wrong. I always have call sheets that are really clearly labelled and accessible for everyone. I try to make sure that I don’t get involved with anyone that’s gonna be discriminatory or a bad vibe. Everyone’s doing it essentially for fun, so you wanna make sure its enjoyable.”

The events that Nat works at take place both legally, in licensed venues, and at free parties, which are outlawed and often shut down through aggressive policing. “With free parties, you don’t know how it’s gonna be set up, but you might know the crew. They often aren’t budgeting for huge production, or if they are its off the scale with big installation boards. You can get dealt with a shit one that just visually looks crap, or you could get one that’s completely on the opposite end. You also might just start driving and not even end up there. I drove from Bristol to Plymouth to Davidstow back to Minehead and back to Bristol in one night. Never made it. Comparing that to a legal one, things are a bit easier. I like to try and shoot events that are actually gonna put the effort in to look good. That’s what’s important. I don’t shoot with flash, because it all looks the same, so lighting is important”.

I asked Nat to recall her favourite job so far. “Maybe when I shot my first bigger artists. Casisdead and Flowdan”, she said. “It was great, and it allowed me to learn how to actually colour grade.” On her worst she told me that “there are a lot of times with clients where it’s just so long. I’ve set my terms and conditions, and they just clearly go against them. Also probably when I have kit fail or forget to bring something. I’m usually shooting at like 2am so where am I going to go get equipment from. You just get this sinking feeling.”

To conclude our discussion, I wanted to dig more into her latest project, Generation Electric, which she runs entirely on her own. It is an exhibition-based set-up, exploring youth, rave and dance culture. “I’m the director and founder, it’s just a solo project done by me. The first event looked at younger creatives, and how they build up the foundations of the industry. For Bristol being such a dance and music-oriented place, there’s not a lot of arts events that are like that. I merged it with the day party stuff, and I knew people would like it. I would like to move it to London, not all of it, but it’d be good to have a multi-city thing. Get bigger venues, bigger collaborators. My main focus with the exhibitions is that I want to do open call, so it’s not just who I pick. A lot of open calls you have to pay for which is absolutely crazy. You shouldn’t be gatekeeping just to get your paycheck.”

After some more catching up and gossip about our old high school friends and acquaintances, we wandered up the impossibly steep Church Street, and back into the venue. I watched her set up her equipment to photograph the Tribal Audio crew, then made my way home before the evening kicked off. I left our discussion with feelings of both hope and anxiety. The optimism, passion, and success of the country’s youth is palpable; these

people are thriving, and the quantity and quality of what they are producing is immense. We must fight to ensure that this community, and its varied equivalents, are able to continue forwards in their self-made genius, unconstrained by the cruelty of austerity. It would be a great shame to lose work like Nat’s to the false government notion that the arts are not important, and a great joy to see what proper funding and opportunities could facilitate.