(Publication date September 2025)
‘Lost in music, lost in dreams’ is the result of a unique collaboration. It combines the work of an European rock photographer and the insight of an Australian music journalist who also happens to be a singer-songwriter. In the process they have created an exciting style of rock book. Gijsbert Hanekroot was a professional rock photographer in the Netherlands from the late sixties to 1983. Through his work in concert, press interviews and private sessions, and given the popularity of the country as a touring and promotional territory, he photographed virtually every major performer in rock, pop, soul and blues of the era. Robert Forster was a founding member of the internationally known rock band The Go-Betweens. He has recorded nine solo albums, and in 2005 began a career as a music critic for the Australian politics and cultural magazine The Monthly. A selection of his reviews with additional writings was published in 2011 as ’The 10 Rules of Rock And Roll’. In 2016, he published the award winning memoir ‘Grant & I.
For a while Gijsbert had already been toying with the idea of making a book with his images and accompanying words telling the stories of their time. And then, by chance, he came across a copy of ‘The Ten Rules’… Reading the book and admiring Forster’s writing, he decided to approach him with the idea of them working together. So began communication between two artists from different continents and generations… The Dutch photographer and the Australian rock poet; Gijsbert’s eye, Robert’s words… Forster amazed at the beauty and the history enclosed in the photographs, responded not with a straight history of the era, but wrote something more personal in allignment with Hanekroot’s ‘eye’ for detail and subjects. Accompanying the photographs which Forster choose and set beside the images, are Forster’s musings and writings. Poetically metered, insightful, funny, warm-hearted observations that, when read in conjunction with the accompanying image, creates a chronicle of a visually potent and musically important decade.
English | Paperback | September 2025 | ISBN 9789082265095 | 80 pages