THIS GIRL
IS SUPER

RAVE ON

Amongst the variety of paths I’ve taken in my life: DJ, musician, filmmaker, dreaming guide, death doula and tarot reader, I also danced down the acid and amphetamine path as a young clubbing raver from 1990-1995.

Recently, I was going through boxes of belongings and I unearthed all of my old clubland rave scrapbooks and photo albums. As I sat laughing and reminiscing over the wildly colourful DIY fashions, bugged out expressions and enlarged pupils of the ravers and old friends in my collection, it dawned on me that these photos were an important time capsule for an era which no longer exists. I had captured a glimpse of the pre-internet, pre-smart phone, pre-digital camera North American underground 90s club scene, with all its unique fashionistas and youth culture. 

Travelling around the North American rave circuit, I snapped images of club kids and ravers in New York, California, Arizona, Ontario, British Colombia and Quebec. The early stages of this scene never really had a lot of documentation, as the mainstream media was oblivious to it while it existed and popular culture only started referencing it after it had peaked.

During those years, I would bring disposable and Polaroid cameras with me everywhere to document everything. Conventional film cameras were heavy and too expensive to risk losing at a rave. Disposable  cameras, on the other hand were light, portable and it wasn’t the end of the world if I lost one .. . and I definitely lost a few! The cameras that did survive the night would end up getting developed at a camera store in the local mall, much to the amusement and sometimes horror of the staff. 

Once the photos were developed, I would then begin the process of putting them into my scrapbooks by cutting out the images of people and glueing them on cosmic backgrounds found in old science magazines This analogue collage effect was the only way I could capture the feel and spirit of the time: spaced out kids looking to escape from a cynical outside world into a cartoon cosmic universe.

Tree Carr was born in 1972 and grew up in the United States and Canada. She immigrated to the UK in 1999