We caught up with this year’s Abbey Road Music Photography Awards winner, Inès Ziouane, who took the Festival Category, to discuss the series that accompanies her winning shot.
Captured at Québec City’s Festival d’Été, the images grew from a single spontaneous moment into a full narrative that explores the energy, rhythm, and shared playfulness of the crowd.
In this Behind the Lens interview, Inès reflects on how the scene unfolded, what drew her to photograph it as a sequence, and how documenting the crowd’s movement reshaped her approach to festival storytelling.
Can you take us back to the moment you first noticed this scene. What caught your attention?
The Festival d’Été de Québec takes place right in the heart of Québec City in Canada. The festival lasts ten days and each day has its own musical theme, so the crowd and atmosphere shift completely depending on the headliner. That day, J Balvin was performing, and the energy was absolutely electric. I had just arrived at the main stage on the Plains of Abraham to start shooting, I was waiting in the photo pit when I suddenly heard screams behind me. When I turned around, I saw a girl jumping in the air, and then after her, dozens of others started doing the same. It was the first time I’d ever witnessed something like that at a concert. I instantly knew something special was happening that night.
You mentioned this was the first time you’d witnessed that kind of playfulness during an event. How did that emotional connection shape the way you approached capturing it?
At first, I thought it was just a one-time moment. It was already beautiful and spontaneous enough to stand on its own! I remember taking that first photo and instantly feeling it was something special, I even snapped a picture of my camera screen with my phone while still in the pit to send to my family.
But when I realised more and more people were joining in, I understood that it wasn’t just a single image but it was a story unfolding in front of me. I love working in series when a pattern or repetition emerges naturally. The idea that one girl’s joyful jump could spark a collective act of playfulness fascinated me. It became less about one image, and more about how energy spreads through people and how joy is contagious.
Your winning image was the first jump you captured. What made that specific frame stand out to you as the image for the competition, compared to the others in the series?
Choosing that frame felt very instinctive. It wasn’t just about composition or light, it was about the emotion I personally felt. That first jump held all the magic of discovery. I wanted to honour that specific moment and the festival itself, which is very dear to me and whose team has become real friends over the years. What I love about this photograph is how many stories coexist within it. The more you look at it, the more individual details you notice : so many lives intertwined in the same instant. Thousands of people gathered to experience the same concert, yet each one lived it in their own way. To me, that’s very representative of life itself. We share moments, but we each experience them differently.
When working in series, there’s often a rhythm or narrative that develops organically. How did you sequence or curate the images to tell that story?
It started with that first girl, and I thought I would focus solely on her because she kept jumping again and again, almost like a ritual. But then, I realised that others were joining her, and the story grew beyond her. The main stage of the Festival d’Été de Québec can hold up to 100,000 people, so imagine facing this sea of bodies all in motion, jumping together under the sky. It was fascinating, almost cinematic, to witness that kind of collective energy taking shape.
Looking back now, what does this series mean to you beyond the competition? Has documenting that moment changed the way you look for stories or approach your subjects in future projects?
Absolutely. Before this, I didn’t often think in terms of series when photographing festivals. This experience really trained my eye to look for recurring gestures, emotions, and behaviours : the small details that when put together tell a bigger story.I’ve realised that you can document an entire concert without ever showing the artist, just by observing the people who come to experience it. There’s so much beauty and truth in the audience itself.
When I returned to the festival in 2025, the first show I covered right after landing was Hozier in the rain. During the second song, he stopped to say he had never seen people jumping like that at his shows. When I turned around, I saw a girl doing the exact same jump as last year. It felt like the festival was greeting me, saying “Welcome back.”
