STUDIO 54 CABARET COUPLE, 1977. Bill Bernstein: This is one of the first shots I took at Studio 54 – the couple reminding me of a pre-war Berlin cabaret image. I had this image stuck in my mind throughout the entire Disco project. These were the people that I found the most intriguing, those who had a whole other life at night and became their fantasy character.
XENON #1, 1979. Bill Bernstein: Xenon was located in the former Henry Miller Theater at 124 West 43rd St, which had previously been a porn house. Xenon was the only nightclub popular enough to compete with Studio 54 and was popular with the straighter, white, upwardly mobile crowd.
The disco was where you could go to escape the banalities of daily life and slip into a fabulous world of fantasy, where creatures of the night enjoyed a world where anything goes. In a post-Sexual Revolution, post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS era, disco was more than big hair, bell bottoms, and platform shoes—it was the freedom to experiment with gender, sexuality, and appearances to subvert cultural mores. As a result, the disco was where you could find anyone and everyone; Latin, black or white; gay, straight, bi or poly; young, old, or middle age; famous, infamous or unknown—everyone came together under the disco ball to dance the night away.
In the late 1970s, photographer Bill Bernstein went to the legendary Studio 54 for the very first time, on assignment for The Village Voice. He was there to photograph a dinner in honor of the President’s mother, Lillian Carter. A curious location for humanitarian awards but Jimmy was hip. And after 11 pm, the honoree and her guests had left, and the revelers started pouring in. Over the course of that evening, Bernstein had an epiphany: the disco was the place to be.
HURRAH DOOR, 1979. Bill Bernstein: Hurrah was at 36 West 62nd Street and ran from 1976-80. It was mostly a punk and new wave club, and I remember seeing Klaus Nomi, The Fleshtones and other new wave bands there. There were a lot of Rock and Roll Forever and Disco Sucks T-shirts here.
As Bernstein writes in the book’s introduction, “It had never been my interest to shoot celebrities at these clubs, and there are very few in this book. the idea of elbowing my way through a mountain of people with Nikons to take a photo of Mick Jagger getting drunk on the sofa with Mikhail Baryshnikov was just not my thing. Why would I shoot this when everyone else is getting the same shot? My attention was caught by the unknown guy in the corner, probably a waiter or messenger, in the black leather t-shirt and silver cap, posing for hours upon hours, talking to no one. Or the beautiful blonde on the dance floor, half drunk, and dress half off, who went unnoticed.”
It was this eye for detail, this ability to discern the personalities that made disco such a phenomenon, that gives Disco the air of a lost weekend that spanned years until AIDS brought the scene crashing down. Disco was the place where everyone could be a star if they were ready, willing, and able to give themselves up to the music. In Bernstein’s photographs, we return to a time and place where the desire to boogie down brought together people from all walks of life.
STUDIO 54 MOON AND SPOON, 1978. Bill Bernstein: This shot was taken at Studio 54 at closing time one night, I noticed this couple under the famous Moon and Spoon. Romance, in a blitzed-out Studio 54 kind of way.
Photos: credited © Bill Bernstein / Reel Disco: The Bill Bernstein Photographs RRP £40 / $60, published by Reel Art Press.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
