Join gig photographer HAYLEY MADDEN for Underexposed: Notes From The Pit - a survival guide to music photography in the nineties & beyond.

Underexposed: Notes From The Pit is a survival guide to music photography in the nineties and beyond.

The early nineties. Britpop was exploding all over the country like a bad case of acne and Lad and Ladette culture crashed into the media scene, drunkenly shaming anything politically correct. The music industry convinced the masses that the sixties were repeating themselves.

Very unLadettish Hayley Madden – Abba fan, teetotal and always last to be chosen for the football team – was quietly studying photography at college. But for reasons unknown (until now) she ended up working at the NME and was swept up into the media frenzy of British music. Armed with just a Nikon, she surfed the wave into the noughties, when the traditional music press suffered a very slow, lo-fi death.

For 20 years, Hayley lived inside the lens, from the sweat-soaked photo pits to the velvet ropes of exclusive after-parties, documenting music as it burned brightly, faltered and changed. But behind the gigs and the glitz was a deeper story: the ground shifting under our feet. The nineties and beyond saw the industry transformed – recording, marketing, distribution and listening itself were reinvented.

This story is about surviving those shifts as the silicon chip changed all our lives forever.

Copies of Hayley's book will be available for sale at the Festival and there'll be a dedicated book signing after her event.

About Hayley Madden:

While studying photography at college, Hayley Madden landed a job at NME and was swept into the heart of British music culture. Armed with a Nikon camera, she spent the next two decades photographing artists and bands for the British music press. From crowded photo pits and backstage dressing rooms to festivals and after-show parties, she documented a defining era in music as the digital revolution transformed recording, publishing, and photography.

Hayley lives in Essex with her long-time partner Keith, son Kyle and Alfie the cat.

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