In the United States
In Europe
“A record of the life-affirming creative scene in a city bubbling with talent and energy”
– The Guardian
“a rare document of history in the making”
– DAZED
“captured the fugitive spirit of a rip-roaring city in the days before AIDS”
– The New York Times
“an energy and an intimacy about the photographs that would be hard to mimic on a camera phone today”
– Wallpaper*
“a shameless dive into the nightclubs that made New York vibrate in the eighties”
– Harper’s Bazaar
Between 1980 and 1988, I worked midnight to 4 a.m. as a camera girl in New York City’s craziest dance clubs, taking Polaroids of the dancers as they drank, drugged, flirted, and, sometimes, fell in love.
Area. Roseland. The Ritz. The Palladium. The Savoy. All of them. The dancers came with pink hair, green hair, blue hair, no hair. They dressed to impress, high-style and low-cut, wrapping themselves in telephone cords, pagan charms, baskets of fruit. Every night was Halloween. They posed, I snapped, and for a few bucks, they had a souvenir of the night.
– Sharon Smith
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