Overview
“If you don’t know Patrick McMullan, you ought to get out more!”—Andy Warhol
With a career spanning three decades, Patrick McMullan is one of the world’s most celebrated party, fashion, and society photographers. Possessing status on par with his subjects, McMullan knows the intricate connections of those exalted few who live behind the velvet ropes. His relentless documentation of the famous figures who made New York City's nightlife the definition of decadence in the age of excess is collected for the first time in so8os: A Photographic Diary of a Decade.
A consummate chronicler, Patrick McMullan began his career in the early 1980s shooting the downtown scene alongside nightclub scribe Stephen Saban for the original Details magazine, with nothing more than an Instamatic camera and the encouragement of Andy Warhol. In so8os, he brings us back into the exclusive world of glamour and glitz as it was experienced by the era’s greatest fashion, music, and art icons who mixed uptown elitism with downtown eccentricity in New York City’s nightlife.
Shot in such legendary nightspots as Studio 54, Area, Danceteria, Limelight, and the Cat Club, so8os features unreleased photos from the Patrick McMullan archives. In these pages, McMullan shares with us his photographic diary that holds the essence of New York characters and night crawlers.
Beautiful people populating these pages of societal history include: Carl Bernstein, William Burroughs, Bob Colacello, Michael Musto, Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, Pat Hackett, Anthony Haden-Guest, Richard Johnson, Fran Lebowitz, Cookie Mueller, Glenn O’Brien, Paige Powell, Stephen Saban, Jeffrey Slonim, Richard Turley, John Waters, Kevin Bacon, Drew Barrymore, Matthew Broderick, Glenn Close, Joan Collins, Shirley MacLaine, James St. James, Corey Feldman, Michael J. Fox, Corey Haim, Pee-wee Herman, Rob Lowe, Sylvia Miles, Olivia Newton-John, Jack Nicholson, Tatum O’Neal, River Phoenix, Christopher Reeve, Joan Rivers, Kevin Spacey, Sylvester Stallone, Raquel Welch, Nan Kempner, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Adam Ant, Fab 5 Freddy, Lou Reed, Cher, Duran Duran, Boy George, Debbie Harry, Billy Idol, Grace Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Courtney Love, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Palmer, Iggy Pop, Joey Ramone, Nick Rhodes, David Lee Roth, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Susanne Bartsch, Dianne Brill, Tina Chow, Carmen D’Alessio, Johnny Dynell, Eric Goode, Cornelia Guest, Jane Holzer, Bianca Jagger, Perri Lister, Ann Magnuson, Claire O’Connor, Sally Randall, Steve Rubell, Rudolf, RuPaul, Elizabeth Saltzman, Anita Sarko, Ian Schrager, John Sex, Zoe Tamerlis, Tinkerbelle, Teri Toye, Chi Chi Valenti, Bobby Zarem, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mary Boone, Louise Bourgeoise, Francesco Clemente, Henry Geldzahler, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Steven Meisel, Kenny Scharf, Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol, Patricia Field, Tom Ford, Halston, Carolina Herrera, Iman, Marc Jacobs, Betsey Johnson, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Zandra Rhodes, Yves Saint Laurent, Francesco Scavullo, Brooke Shields, Stephen Sprouse, Diane von Furstenberg, Diana Vreeland, and many more.
“Patrick McMullan has come to epitomize not just a certain strata of celebrity, but the bona fide celebrification of the photographer.”
—David Friend