Features
Back to the Island: New photobook captures the sun-drenched zenith of late '90s to early '00s Ibiza clubbing
With photos taken at some of the White Isle's most iconic parties between 1998 and 2003, Photographer Dean Chalkley's new book acts as a time machine to Ibiza's illustrious, hedonistic heyday
What era would you go back to if you had a time machine? For dance music fans, the answer would perhaps be the disco hey-day of Studio54 or the acid house explosion of the Second Summer of Love in 1989 — though, we're sure the pinnacle of Ibiza clubbing at the turn of the millennium would make the list.
While we're coming up short on access to a flux capacitor just yet, photographer Dean Chalkley is giving us the next best thing with his new photobook Back In Ibiza, featuring images taken during some of the White Isle's most iconic parties between 1998 and 2003. Manumission? Check. Cream at Amnesia? Check. Dancing on tables just after sunrise at Bora Bora? Check and check.
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"In ‘98, Mixmag asked me to go to Ibiza for the first time, and the brief was simple: ‘Photograph what’s going on’. I went with a journalist who disappeared after one day but I proceeded to photograph the amazing people and scenes that revolve around the club culture," says Chalkley.
"The first set of pictures I brought back to the Mixmag offices turned the magazine upside down, instead of the planned four pages, it grew into a giant 30-page feature with only picture captions — these photographs had impact!"
“I returned to Ibiza many times over the period that the book covers, and built up a large archive of pictures,” Chalkley continues. “I was blown away by what I saw and felt back then, this book is a portal to those incredible times of wonder. A time where a hedonistic atmosphere ruled, people were living in the moment and casting their collective fate to the wind. It's a celebration of those joyful and liberated times.”
Read this next: The history of the White Isle: How did Ibiza become a party island?
Back in Ibiza features 300 photographs taken by Chalkley across that period alongside quotes from Happy Mondays' Bez and Shaun Ryder, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy and DJ Paulette — with a foreword by Mixmag's Managing Director, Nick Stevenson.
Back In Ibiza by Dean Chalkley is available now via ACC Art Books, here
Megan Townsend is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow her on Twitter
