PEOPLE & SOCIETY: INTERVIEW
Invisible Witness: Nick Waplington
Inside Nineties Fashion And The Underground House Scene
At the very edge of the 1990s, Nick Waplington arrived in the fashion sphere properly equipped with a Royal College of Art diploma and an introduction to a leading New York designer from Richard Avedon, which basically functioned as a kind of occult warrant. His fateful meeting with Isaac Mizrahi, who was looking for a photographer to document his work, reads, in retrospect, as one of those small theatrical gestures that shape a career. The idea to shoot the behind-the-scenes machinations of the fashion industry and its players was hitherto unheard of, and for three heady years Waplington found himself shooting a radical experiment at the precise moment when fashion, club culture and the euphoria of ecstasy collided.
Daylight found him folded into Mizrahi’s studio, an intimate workplace where the glamorous became commonplace and procedural. There is a particular electricity in photographing the making of glamour, and here were the likes of Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Veronica Webb not posed like relics but undergoing adjustments, chatting conspiratorially, smoking cigarettes and drinking soda out of plastic cups. The supermodel here was not an icon so much as an event, and the camera, properly placed, candidly recorded both the choreographed and the accidental.
Night brought a different topology. The clubs Waplington frequented in New York, such as The Sound Factory and Save The Robots, belonged to a city whose nightlife had the urgency of a city in flux. These clubs were not simply venues but laboratories where bodies, sounds and fashions were explosively mixed together. Waplington’s nocturnal images read like dispatches from inside that unique chemistry – a kind of joyous trespass, un-compromised by a later public relations industry, and the deadening presence of the smartphone. Here, the acclaimed image-maker recalls that period in cultural history, and tells FUTURISTIC DRAGON why a life devoted to fashion can be both beautiful and deadly.
These images are so evocative of a certain moment in culture – were you aware you were capturing something that tapped into the zeitgeist?
The early 90s were definitely interesting in the first couple of years, when you didn't know what to expect. There was no defined way of doing things when House music exploded, so it was very exciting. There are pictures in the show from the Sound Factory, for example, which was where everyone would go after Boy Bar on a Saturday night. It was pitch black in there unless they had the strobe on, and it was intense. I used to go to bed early on a Saturday night and set the alarm for 5.45am on Sunday. I would drag myself out of bed and get a cab over to the club at West 27th Street, which was kind of desolate back then. You would go in this little entrance and, suddenly, it was nighttime again. I would be in there from six in the morning until whenever they closed. Then I would be straight back to the atelier.
“There were a lot of people from the fashion world in the clubs, but that wasn’t a draw for me – I was obsessed with the music”
Were you always drawn to fashion, or was that immersion a by-product of shooting the club scene?
There were a lot of people from the fashion world in the clubs, but that wasn’t a draw for me – I was obsessed with the music. It was just something that I was just really into, and I was young enough that I could work all day and be up all night and, you know, survive on a couple of hours of sleep. Actually, very often back then my sleep would just be in the evenings. When I got back from working for Isaac, I'd go to bed for a few hours, and then get up and go out clubbing. Sometimes we would wind up at these after-hours places on 42nd Street, which I couldn't photograph, because there was always illegal gambling and prostitution going on. I would go straight from there to work for him for the day.
How did the working relationship with Isaac come about? You were introduced by Avedon?
Yes. I had met Richard Avedon when he had come to the Royal College of Art and seen my show. He liked my work and contacted me by letter saying that he wanted to buy some. Although I lived in London, I was always in America in the summer months, so, I said, I’ll come and see you. I went to his studio with a box of prints and he bought the box. The next thing I knew, he wanted me to meet this fashion designer, because they had this idea that I would photograph backstage at the fittings. I didn't really know anything about fashion, or the fashion world, but it was about capturing moments, which is something that I’m able to do quite easily as a photographer. Obviously, some of the women in the images were super famous then – people like Christy Turlington and Josie Borain, so I knew who they were. We were all the same age, and became friends and would go out together.
Everyone in these images seems almost unaware of the camera – why do you think you have such a skill for candid reportage?
I think it’s just because people don't actually know that I'm there, and that I'm doing it. I will take photographs on the subway in New York now, and people just ignore me. I don't know how I'm able to do it, but I have an ability to be kind of invisible. I also seem to have an ability to make people feel comfortable. I don't talk to people very much. I'm just kind of there, and I’m kind of in my own head.. I have a sense of when I shouldn't do it as well, and when it might be obtrusive. Especially in a situation where there are naked women around. I always used a lot of discretion. If you look through the contact sheets, you don't see lots of pictures of naked women.
“Fashion did feel a lot more fun, and it was much less self-conscious pre-social media”
This might sound nostalgic but was fashion more fun back then?
Fashion did feel a lot more fun, and less kind of sophisticated, if that is the right way of putting it. And it was much less self-conscious, being pre-social media. There were characters in fashion at that time that literally seemed to live off the scene. Andre Leon Talley is in some of the images, and he was this real enigma in the fashion world. He used to pick me up in his huge oversize coat we would just be going around to one place, then another place, and then another place. He had been taken on by Anna Wintour, as this kind of ‘person-at-large’, but when the huge profits of Condé Nast started to dwindle with the onset of digital, she unceremoniously dropped him. I think he ended up dying almost kind of destitute, or something, because he had managed to not even buy an apartment. He was a very flamboyant character, and extremely knowledgeable, not just about fashion, but about culture and art, and music and politics. You could have really lovely conversations with him. It was such a different time.
Introduction & Interview by John-Paul Pryor
All images courtesy of the artist and Hamiltons Gallery, London.
Get up-close-and-personal with artists from all over the world and unlock the mysteries of the creative mind.
Read in-depth interviews with the most exciting cultural movers and shakers shaping the creative landscape.
Discover the actors, authors, designers, mavericks and entrepreneurs at the bleeding edge of cultural life
