Dafydd Jones’s empire state of mind
In his book, New York: High Life/Low Life, party photographer Dafydd Jones remembers the bright and dark days of the city in the late 20th century
Words: Joseph Bullmore
Photography: Dafydd Jones
Dafydd Jones doesn’t particularly like parties – which seems, on the face of it, an odd admission for the most famous party photographer of his time. “But that’s probably why I’ve been able to keep it up for so long!” he smiles. “If you like parties too much in this job, that’s quite a bad look…” The schedule could certainly be gruelling. Hired by Tina Brown at Vanity Fair (and later deployed under Graydon Carter there, too), Jones was sometimes dispatched to shoot at more than 20 parties a week, scattered across the glossy rump of Manhattan. This was the city at its power-shouldered prime – the 1980s and 1990s, when greed was good and Brooklyn didn’t exist.
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