Gioia de Bruijn

Weekend Warriors is a raw and intimate document of the festival and afterparty culture in Amsterdam, Berlin, and London. The collection of photos in this book were originally shot as a private photo diary for Dutch photographer Gioia de Bruijn, serving as a way to »remember on Tuesday what had happened on Sunday,« never with the intent to meet the public’s eye. Chronicling an uninhibited mindset of escapism, hedonism, and overal oblivion between 2008 and 2014, it is pure in its depiction of a movement that started as a rebellion against the current state of affairs in the world. Always honest, mostly beautiful, and sometimes terrifyingly confrontational, the Weekend Warriors series is the record of what once was and might never be again.
As a somewhat controversial photographer, Gioia de Bruijn (b. 1986) makes intimate but aesthetic reports, leaving out the voyeurism. De Bruijn sews together a floating experience between »letting go«, »getting high« and »sexual realism«.