Never Alone: Documenting the European free party scene

Cheyenne Clementi and Valentina Morandi spent years on the dancefloor with their cameras. This new book is the result.

In a world where video dominates our social media feeds and, in the dance music echo chamber, clips of massive drops delivered to equally massive crowds are everywhere, we were delighted to learn about this beautiful book. 

Never Alone 1997–2004: Raving in Europe is a record of the European free party scene at its peak, shot by a pair of photographers who weren’t shooting from the sidelines—they were right there on the dancefloor. Cheyenne Clementi and Valentina Morandi met at school in Milan before diving deep into rave culture. They were living, breathing, and documenting the scene. 

The accompanying text by Tobia D’Onofrio, author of Rave New World, charts the years free parties spread across Europe after the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act tried to shut them down in the UK.

“Rave emerged as a liberated space, a temporarily autonomous zone, outside imposed hierarchies and rules,” Clementi told Happy Tuesdays. “A place where participants were not simply the audience—they were the party itself. 

“Never Alone documents what became known as the golden years of the rave scene. The parties captured in the book were much more than just parties: they tell the story of a real attempt to build an alternative society, founded on sharing, self-organisation, and freedom.”

What will you find on the pages within? Snapshots of a community that came together through their shared interest, and parties that existed for a few, euphoric hours before vanishing into thin air. No trace, no feed, no encore… until now. 

Never Alone contains 160 original analogue photographs, shot on Nikon, printed across 196 black-and-white pages. It's out now. 

____

Never Alone 1997–2004: Raving in Europe is available via DRAGO
Photos by Cheyenne Clementi and Valentina Morandi