Tod Papageorge, the American photographer, is one of these. And not only can he remember the clubhe has a collection of stunning pictures to prove it.
Now those pictures are being released in a new book, “Studio 54”. The first edition has already sold out; a second “silver edition” will be available on 23 December.
“Like so many good things, my involvement with Studio 54 was a fluke,” Papageorge tells CNN over the telephone from New York.
“My girlfriend at the time was a photographer, and had access to Studio 54.
“They asked me if I would be interested in photographing there, and who would turn that down? I was very lucky, and took advantage of it.”
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Remembering the glory days of Studio 54 is not without its poignancy. The club represented the final moments of a pre-AIDS world, and the dawn of a new, more cynical age.
“It was a terrible transition marker,” says Papageorge. “It was like the last gasp of the Roman empire going down, in a way. The owners were charged with tax evasion, and I the summer of 1981 there was a long article in the New York Times about this mysterious illness affecting the gay community in New York.
“A good percentage of the people in those pictures later died of AIDS. It wasn’t a more innocent time — you could hardly call it innocent. But it was an unreflective, out-of-control, wonderful, stampeding time. It will never happen again.”
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