2024 wacken rock ‘n roll photography workshop

The Rock ‘n Roll Photography Workshop is an educational initiative launched as a collaboration between the Wacken Foundation and Pep Bonet in 2022.Taking the opportunity of 2024 Wacken edition (31st July to August 3rd 2024) and led by NOOR author Pep Bonet, it will empower six selected English-speaking photographers by facilitating the development of their visual mastery in music, event and festival photography.

The criteria for selection of candidates is as follows:

• Portfolios will be reviewed on the basis of original, human-focused storytelling, including but not limited to community focus on musicians, teams, attendees, volunteers and the many faces of human connection in music festival culture
• Personal moments of humour, spontaneity, fun and memorable moments
• Inclusive and ethical representation of diverse individuals, couples and groups
• Capacity for the creation of rich single images that are exciting, expressive or captivating
• Capacity for the creation of visual stories that can act as effective communication
• We push for gender parity, and actively pursue equal representation of candidates

Wacken Open Air (Abbreviated as W:O:A) is a heavy metal music festival, held annually since 1989 on the first weekend of August in the village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Almost all styles and subgenres of hard rock and metal are represented and hosted. It is now one of the largest heavy metal festivals in the world and one of the largest open-air festivals in Germany. Between 2011 and 2018, the number of attendees was around 85,000, 75,000 of whom were paying visitors.

The workshop will be led by Pep Bonet, multi-award winning photojournalist with a large body of work in music photography. Former photographer of Motörhead, official photographer of Wacken Open Air for various editions, Pep has been committed to the visual documentation of rock 'n roll and heavy metal scenes across the globe, as demonstrated, among others, by his latest personal project 'Hellbangers', an audiovisual project and book documenting the unique underground metal music scene of Botswana.