State’s Faces of 2010 would not be faces at all, merely names, if we didn’t have some truly great photographers in our ranks who, out of pure passion for these bands, went out and shot them for us.

The creativity and quality of the photographs being produced by young photographers in Ireland today who are working with up-and-coming bands is on a really high level. It seems to be the small bands with the minimal (or no) budgets who are meeting up with a new breed of photographers and are producing some entertaining and memorable images. It’s not just the Trojan lens-work of State’s Richard Gilligan or Loreana Rushe whose work features heavily in our special. All the other bands that we didn’t get to personally shoot still sent in great images with style and humour where, in one case, the only make-up was some black insulating tape. And they all know the difference between low-res and high-res images and you’d be AMAZED the people in this industry who don’t.

Viva the little guys with the big ideas and the wide-angle lenses. We really didn’t feel like the photographs appearing on the website did them justice and in wanting to also package our Faces Of 2010 and have a nostalgic trip down the route of putting a (almost) real magazine together again we made this for you – our first State special.

Download the PDF or view it below.