Yushy was on a packed tube on New Year’s Eve when he heard voices yell his name. He recognised their faces from the squat raves he had been photographing. “We’re going to a party right now,” they whispered. “I have my camera,” he said, and followed them. He didn’t know anything else about them. In the squat rave underground, which thrives on anonymity and secret locations, it didn’t matter. “They trusted me with them, and I trusted them to take me to the rave,” he says.
His new book, Section 63: Underground and Unmastered, documents three years in this London scene. Yushy started out as a fresher when he replied to a party promoter looking for a photographer. But he grew bored with the more mainstream events he was photographing, and started asking attendees about underground happenings. “I also asked around in group chats,” he says, “Which I later found out – once I was inside the official rave group chat – were placeholders for people to be approved. Purgatory, essentially!”
Interesting article, but waaay too many uncensored faces and locations in this article. Feels like journalistic malpractice to me.