A time without phones, social media and constant documentation already feels unreal. Hard to imagine how people met with just one plan, stayed for hours, or simply shared a moment without recording it. New York musician and photographer Nick Zinner – best known as guitarist and songwriter of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs – captured exactly that atmosphere in the early 2000s.
Shot from the stage during tours around 2003–2004, Crowds turns the gaze around: instead of watching the band, we stand where the band stood. Faces, anticipation, closeness – all unfolding during the recurring emotional pause of the song Maps. The photographs, created on analog film, feel less like documentation and more like collective memory. A portrait not only of fans, but of a cultural moment where fashion, intimacy and music briefly existed without self-awareness.
“To me these older crowd photos especially not only show a moment from a show or concert , but they also show a time before iPhones , they show the fashion and spirit of the early 2000s when people were generally allowed to be less self conscious out at night . They feel innocent and joyous, unselfconscious and full of life.“
– Nick Zinner
Presented at janinebeangallery in Berlin, the series becomes a reminder of how concerts once functioned: shared attention, eye contact, bodies in the same space. Memories that feel different – because they weren’t endlessly documented, but shared, felt and lived together.
Exhibition
Nick Zinner — Crowds
March 12 – April 11, 2026 (Opening: March 12, 6–8 pm)
janinebeangallery
Torstrasse 154, 10115 Berlin
www.janinebeangallery.com
all images: Nick Zinner. Courtesy janinebeangallery, Berlin
