Close Your Eyes is a frenzied reworking of the accumulated archive of photographer Gareth McConnell. An onslaught of kaleidoscopic imagery fuses portraits he took of rave-goers in Ibiza with pictures he both shot and found of a number of key moments in recent British history, from the 1985 Battle of the Beanfield to the London Riots of 2011. Amongst this we find collected references to the Zen mystic Osho, whose people are said to have experimented with Ecstasy and taken it into clubs for the first time.

This is a personal, political body of work–a frustrated meditation on the nature of human occurrence, the power of mass communion in it’s many forms, and the delirious experience of losing oneself to hedonism from the view of someone who saw it from within. As an object, the book is an immersive experience, galvanized with the same primal energy of the rave, it’s rapture and it’s ecstasy. Rythmn, Pulse, Rave, Repeat.


Gareth McConnell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. He studied Photography at the Royal College of Art and has exhibited his work widely across Europe and beyond. Gareth lives and works in London.