The Law of Attraction

A camera is a magnet after dark in New York City. Because it attracts people arm in arm in cocktail so easily, its lens should be a chisel as much as it an optic. It should narrate more than document. Subjects in motion, even within the single frame, elicit the specificity of that night, that place.

A photographer is a character actor with few lines, there to support the stars within the frame, there to give them someone to react to, there to unravel the plot. A single glance from the star is the photographer's cue.

"Move in closer," the look says. The star is in his scene, hits his mark, reads his lines, glances back to the photographer to gauge when he should work the pole.

I couldn't help but think of painter Francis Bacon, whose images and words have been rummaging around in my head since seeing his Centenary Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the summer and buying Michael Peppiatt's biography of as well as David Sylvester's collection of interviews with Bacon (links to the books are at the end of the post). Even in the exhibit shop, I chuckled while flipping through the preface of Peppiatt's biography, where he writes that he was always thrilled to meet Bacon at Reece Mews, "which was usually the first port of call for drinks in a trawl through restaurant, bar and club that would last until dawn." Bacon was the only one not stumbling; and he went to his studio to paint after a night out. Sure, I was at the start of my own trawl the Saturday night I took these pictures; but I was thinking of Bacon's admiration for the ambiguity, not the transparency, of photography as I shot my dancer of choice. As Bacon told Sylvester, he appreciated photography's "slight remove from fact, which returns me onto the fact more violently. Through the photographic image I find myself beginning to wander into the image and unlock what I think of as its reality more than I can by looking at it. And photographs are not only points of reference; they're often triggers of ideas."

I understood the point of reference, the person of reference, this dancer offered me. He didn't trigger someone else because he looked like him. I recognized and responded to this dancer's movement. Plus, our photographic tête-à-tête assuaged my momentary upset from paying a cover for an advertised open bar that nonetheless charged $1 for each plastic cup of well vodka mixed with Diet Coke. Oh, well. It was my best friend Craig Seymour's last night in New York last week; and this was but the first of four places we were headed. Next up was Splash to enjoy the VIP area at the back bar offering free Grey Goose cocktails while DJ Hex Hector spun. We stayed for a bit; then ventured down to Mr. Black, where I knew some of the kids would be, including Nancy Nosecandy and Herra C (both pictured below, left and right).

Also there were Demanda Dahling and DivaSteve (both pictured below, left and right). Craig and I danced off a couple rounds before heading over to The Cock to close the night out in the basement with Ernie Cote. I don't have any pictures of this leg of our night because what happens at The Cock stays at The Cock. But Craig and I enjoyed ourselves so much that we needed a pit stop at Punjabi on the way home. Feeling adventurous, I had the vegetable pakora instead of my usual saag.