24 Hour Party, People is the new project by photographer Juliette Cassidy, documenting Barcelona’s hardcore and car tuning subculture. This is not a clubbing reportage, nor an aestheticisation of the scene — it’s a testament to connection, to that form of tribal loyalty that certain communities produce better than any institution.
The scene’s roots run deep into Valencia’s Ruta del Bakalao, the motorway club circuit that through the Eighties and Nineties turned the Spanish weekend into a collective ritual. A story of excess, yes — but also of community. And it’s precisely that second part Cassidy wanted to tell. As she explained to Dazed: «It’s actually a space with incredibly strong, passionate values and a rigid, DIY code of ethics.»
Cassidy began shooting at 11am, put her camera down as the light faded, and picked it up again around 6am when the sun shifted the atmosphere once more. It’s in that dawn that the images become most honest: exhaustion lowers everyone else’s guard, but not hers. «While the crew I was photographing weren’t fully aware of themselves anymore, and their guards were down because of the long hours, I remained very conscious of what I was doing. This allowed me to capture moments that were very honest», she told Dazed.
What emerges — a couple embracing over a shared cigarette, friends absorbed in conversation — is not the portrait of a counterculture, but of a support system. «I wanted to capture the reality that this isn’t just a social circle, it’s a support system. Many in this scene don’t have easy lives, and knowing their backgrounds, it’s clear that their bond is a necessity», she added. If someone in the crew wasn’t feeling okay and needed to leave, no one stayed behind. They all left together.
At a time when the conversation around clubbing swings between nostalgia and moral panic, 24 Hour Party, People takes a different path — one of closeness. Not critical distance, not exoticisation, but the kind of trust you earn by staying, by waiting out the night alongside someone until the sun comes up.
