Writer Bob Colacello was quick with his Minox 35 EL spy camera, a souvenir he and Andy Warhol each bought on a trip to Germany. Bob was a lynchpin of Andy Warhol’s entourage, writing for and overseeing Interview magazine after being plucked from the Village Voice as a young contributor. Bob describes himself less as a photographer than a privileged witness to decadence. His behind-the-scenes access was his forte: “I’ve always been a journalist who was reporting from the inside,” he told Vanity Fair, where he himself worked for decades after Interview. Artnet described him as “basically the Derek Blasberg of the 70s, capturing snapshots of high society well before Instagram.”
The exhibition It Just Happened: Photographs 1976-1982 (on view through March 4 at Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris) spotlights, casually through Bob’s lens, the cycle of parties and jet-setting excursions that animated the lives of the fabulous — from Cher to Diane von Furstenberg and Divine. It was an era when socialites, aristocrats, actors, politicians, models, and artists rubbed shoulders. In addition to black-and-white photos, the exhibition includes personal memorabilia, such as a thank you note from Liza Minelli on her own letterhead, and vintage editions of Interview, notably a shirtless Joe Dallesandro cover.
Bob’s images captured Andy Warhol mid-bite on a floral couch, Jade Jagger as a child climbing out the sunroof of a limo, Richard Gere in cowboy boots sifting through record covers, Fran Lebowitz with her skeptical gaze trailed by André Leon Talley in a plaid tie, and Jerry Hall with her blonde mane draped seductively over her shoulder. All are snapshot-candid, and often framed askew. “My involvement with photography was like a fling — fun and stimulating while it lasted, but something I’ve put behind me to remain faithful to my first love, writing,” he has noted.
We spoke with Bob in Paris about his “Out” column, discothèque diversity, and nepo babies.
It seems like there was so much social crossover in your pictures. Can you talk about that?
New York is about self-invention. People come from everywhere. But, you know, New York, it’s always about money. New money was always welcome in New York. I mean, it was based on a real estate deal: the Dutch robbing the Lenape Indians blind to buy the whole of Manhattan Island for $24.
But I think disco was about mixing. Gays and straights, uptown and downtown, the rich and not-so-rich. When you went to a disco, you’d see a lot of people who seemed exotic to you — and people love that. It’s a kind of cross between American society and European aristocracy.
Right — you’re encountering so many different typologies.
Andy set the pattern, but I certainly jumped right in there in terms of putting people together who would be totally unexpected. And very spontaneously, which I miss being able to do at The Factory. You’d see the Iranian Ambassador and say, “Do you want to come for lunch tomorrow?” And he’d say, “Can I bring the Chinese ambassador?” And then [Andy Warhol’s business manager] Fred Hughes would be saying, “Oh, Lulu de la Falaise and Paloma Picasso are in town; let’s invite them!” Then you go to Studio 54 and see couple of male models who are a really good-looking… It never stops. When people go out, they want to know there’s going to be a friend or two, but it makes it more special if they meet somebody new, from a different field altogether. And New York really lends itself to that, because New York is finance, fashion, art, real estate… It’s a mix. I think my photos capture some of that. To me, they don’t look like period pieces. They look like documents from the past, but a lot of the scenes could be happening right now.
They capture an energy just as much an era. A hedonistic vibe.
It was very hedonistic. You know, the sexual revolution was declared in the 60s, but it really happened in the 70s. Because in the 70s, the baby boomer generation was in their 20s, and that’s the time you’re wild and rebellious anyway. Then you’re being told: “free love, gay’s okay, pansexuality!” I mean, people today think they invented all this stuff. Then you had the Surgeon General saying, “cocaine’s like marijuana, it’s not addictive”. It was like giving us license. It kept you up all night, took away your inhibitions. And quaaludes… then AIDS hits, and it comes crashing to a stop — but it never really stopped.
As someone who was both participating in and chronicling nightlife, how did those roles work in tandem? Did they function as separate radars, or was it fluid?
I guess it was pretty fluid. I started taking pictures and got a camera in ’76. With Andy, we got these miniature 35-millimetre cameras. In 74, I started my “Out” column — which in those days meant going out, not coming out. So I was already recording, in a kind of flippant, silly, bratty way. Andy said, “just put in every name of every person whose path you cross — famous or not”. Because they’ll call up their friends and say, “I’m in Interview this month, you have to go buy it!”
I — unlike Andy, who would take, like, ten rolls and fill his suit pockets — took one roll. I wasn’t as dedicated to recording as Andy. As a result, the vintage prints you see are quite rare, because I didn’t take that many pictures. And we only printed a few each week.
There a New York Magazine article about nepo babies recently and I was wondering…
Oh, at Interview we were big into nepotism. We were the first ones to do a story on Carrie Fisher and run some of her poems. We had these full-page photographs up front that were called View Girls and Inter Men. A lot of them were the children of aristocrats; a lot of them were Hollywood babies. But we did Prince before anyone, when he was performing in a punk club wearing a purple G-string. You know, Andy was into everything new and young. He loved young people and really believed in giving young people a chance. Every Wednesday, we had an open-house for photographers to bring their portfolios. We were the first to publish Robert Mapplethorpe. That was a great feeling, to give somebody that first leg up because you thought they were talented. Fran Lebowitz — we discovered her and she got two books out of those columns, and she’s still one of the great wits of our time.
So nepotism and emerging figures were considered equally compelling?
Usually they had to have something, if only looks, but some kind of charisma. Because no matter what your background, it just seems to me — having been an observer of human beings for so long — that some people are born with charisma. Some people are born leaders, some people are born artists, some people are born writers.
But that’s what this whole nepo baby thing has brought up for debate: “born with” versus “privileged enough to foster your talent”. People getting automatic opportunities, to the detriment of people who might flourish as well if they were given the chance.
I see what you’re saying. Well-born or not, you have to have some kind of talent. I mean, we did a thing in Vanity Fair, the working title was “Rich Kids”; it ended up being called “Children of Privilege.” And it was my idea to do something that was anti, or counter, Paris Hilton. This idea that they were just famous for being famous, and their parents were… They were useless, which is terrible to say, but I mean, they weren’t involved in philanthropy. They were about going to clubs and getting publicity.
I’m not so much into the why, I’m into the how. How did Warren Beatty get to be Warren Beatty? Or how did AOC? Where did this all start? With artists, I always ask them: when did you occur to you that you could be an artist? Some kids have that figured out at six or seven years old and others never thought it was possible. Like Vik Muniz, who grew up in a favela in Rio, and never thought about it until he got a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago. I think that’s what readers really want. Like, how did this person become a household name? Why am I interested in them?
And what if I turn the question on you: when did you know that you were interested in writing?
I loved history. You had to have a note from your mother, if you were under 12, to take out “grown-up books” from the library. I had read all the children’s books, so I got permission and the first book I took out influenced my thinking ever since. It was [Edward] Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ever since, I’ve been convinced we’re living in the decline and fall of Western civilisation. Also, I was fascinated by a couple of pages that depicted Roman baths with men in towels.
I see.
I never thought of being a writer, but in junior high, or whenever you had to start writing essays, I was very frequently told by teachers: you should consider being a writer. You structure things well.
My mother worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in Garden City [on Long Island], and when she got home from work, before we could go out and play, we — me and my two younger sisters — had to sit down and have cookies and milk and tell her what happened that day in school. So this would turn into us all competing to be the funniest, including mimicking our teachers, other students… You know, just to laugh.
It was the start of the “Out” column — but the schoolboy version.
[laughs] “Out” at Plainview-Old Bethpage Middle School.
Love it.
It just happened, Photographs 1976-1982 is on view at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais through 4 March 2023.
Credits
© Bob Colacello. Courtesy of the artist.