These Photos Capture the Colorful Joy of France's 90s Rave Scene

A version of this article originally appeared on Noisey France.

There’s always something edifying about looking back on the earliest days of our idols. For example, leafing through the photo book Plastic Dreams by Olivier Degorce transports viewers to the birthplace of European house music: Paris in the 1990s. Therein, one can pick out the Chemical Brothers back when they had more hair and new ideas, Rebotini without his trademark mustache and tailored three-piece suits, and a young and reckless Carl Craig. But above all, Degorce’s book shows us the vision of the nightclub before it was a sponsored, industrial thing, back when it was a bit edgier, exciting, and mysterious.

In addition to capturing an era and a movement, Degorce documented the beginnings of the artists who would later go on to dominate the international electronic music scene. His photos bring us to underground parties in the Parisian banlieue, illustrate the newfound visibility and virtual deification of the DJ, and feature many of the personalities who would soon make their rounds through the biggest festivals in the country. How do we interact these suspended moments in time without reducing them to reverent—and inadvertently inaccurate—fantasies? Degorce doesn’t really tell us. Instead, he allows us to establish our own opinions. In looking at these snapshots, two impulses bubble to the surface: the need to mourn a golden era gone by and the fierce desire to immortalize it in our own mythology.

Plastic Dreams by Olivier Degorce was released in March by Headbangers Publishing. You can order it here.