Faces of Ecstasy

Faces of Ecstasy is the result of a five-year investigation into the hidden world of Ecstasy pill design and production. Created by Amsterdam-based artist and writer Adam Fierman and photographer Peter Andrew Lusztyk, the book documents more than 30 years of Dutch pill design through over 1,200 ultra-macro photographs and extensive cultural research.

Borrowing from luxury branding, cartoons, corporate logos, internet culture, and global politics, these pills reveal an underground industry acutely tuned to the pulse of contemporary culture. Produced anonymously, consumed by millions, and designed to disappear, they form an unexpected archive of visual history. Using museum-grade macro photography, the book transforms tiny, disposable objects into monumental cultural artifacts. What was once secretive, fleeting, and underground becomes impossible to ignore.

Alongside the photographs are stories behind the pills, investigations into underground manufacturing, and rare interviews with collectors, chemists, dealers, harm-reduction experts, and pill producers, many speaking publicly for the first time.

At once art book, visual anthropology, and cultural history, Faces of Ecstasy sees Ecstasy pills as illegal pop artifacts: tiny objects carrying the aesthetics, anxieties, aspirations, and branding languages of their era. The result is a groundbreaking document of one of the Netherlands’ most influential and least visible criminal creative industries.

Adam Fierman (b. 1989) is an Amsterdam-based artist, writer, and researcher whose work explores branding, design, and visual culture within illicit and informal economies. Drawing from a background in advertising and visual communication, his practice examines how anonymous mass-produced objects function as cultural signals and marketing artifacts. Through large-scale photographic archives and installations, Fierman reframes underground visual systems as contemporary cultural history.

Peter Andrew Lusztyk (b. 1982) is a Canadian photographer and visual artist known for large-format, hyper-detailed images that transform everyday objects into striking visual statements. Balancing fine art, editorial, and commercial practice, his photography explores value, nostalgia, circulation, and the overlooked systems shaping contemporary life through meticulously controlled lighting, macro detail, and minimalist composition.

Lusztyk’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Design Museum Den Bosch, and collected by institutions including Global Affairs Canada. He has also collaborated with global brands including Apple and Canon.