JPG Magazine: Stories: Photo Essay: Love Is Everywhere

Love Is Everywhere

By Sebastian

16 May 2008

You had to look hard to find that love, but at least you had to look equally hard to find any violence, which is an outstanding fact for a mass event attended by about 1,200,000 people. So maybe it is unfair to judge the parade's motto by the absence of a huge hugging orgy but one should in contrary take the almost complete absence of violence as an indication for the correctness of the organizers' slogan.

The Love Parade originated in Berlin, Germany in 1989 and has spread over the world since then. Last year it was decided to move the German parade to the Ruhr Area, as Berlin was no longer willing to pay for the cleaning of the streets afterwards.

With House and techno not being my first choice of music, I had all the time of the world for the camera. There was no chance of talking to people either - if you want to get to know somebody, you may soon find out about the truth in "dancing is communicating". At a noise level above 100dB there is nothing else but gestures and body language.

Besides oft the feeling of a great open air festival taking place in the center of a city, crossbred with the Camino de Santiago going in a circle, this Love Parade was an interesting chance for social studies, but I will leave this field to others.

There seemed to be a lot of first-timers (like me) and a noticeable amount of quite ... let's say ... conservative people, who simply refused to change their habits. They have been to the Love Parade for the last 15 years, so why stop? Age seems a very relative value, in both directions. The amount of individuals that were barely, or in many cases, years away from being of age was remarkable (from a parental point of view) for a event that is sometimes ill-reputed as a public orgy driven by drugs and music at 150+ bpm. I don't know how it was in the last years, but whoever went there hoping to see things like that was disappointed - it was simply a real big open air party, it was fun for most attendees and had the usual downsides of mass demonstrations and open air festivals: people being sick, port-a-potties being disgusting, public transport being collapsed. I think, I will be there at the next parade and I will bring a camera.