She was 28 when she joined the Ritz, the East Village club that became the epicenter of the New Wave of music. Seated behind a stand, Sharon Smith offered her services to revelers, capturing for three dollars a quick portrait, then handed to clubbers. Then she entered the Savoy, the Red Parrot, Studio 54 of course, the Roseland Ballroom, Merlyn's, 4D, the Area, the Palladium, the Mars, and all these frenetic catalysts of New York energy from the 1980s.
At the time, the city was both effervescent and brutal. Marginal communities roamed nightclubs, looking for a tribe for the nightor maybe for life. The threat of AIDS exists, as does that of intolerance, and the party becomes a place of outlet where freedom and chic reign. Sharon Smith, hidden behind her shoulder pads and the lens of her SX-70, immortalizes everything. Anonymous and celebrities pass through his viewfinder, giving rise to iconic photographs, collected today in the pages of “Camera Girl”, the new book published by Idea.
Untamed Celebrities
In an interview conducted by writer Bill Shapiro, nestled in this 144-page book with a burgundy cover, the camera girl speaks about the time: “Race didn’t matter. Neither does gender. You saw men dressed as women, women dressed as mens, people impersonating celebrities, and even some of the biggest celebrities coming themselves. All these subcultures came together every night to dance – and there was a real sense of unity.” Sharon Smith also talks about the importance of clothing to enter these clubs where experimentation always wins.
The Camera Girl talks about her meeting with Grace Jones at 3 a.m. “When I walked up to her and raised my camera… she looked at me for a split second, put on her sunglasses, then smiled. The flash went off and she whispered, “Thank you, my love,” then headed to the dance floor.” The one with David Bowie, who gently offers his profile, and Madonna the corner of one eye, the one with a Debbie Harry with pink eyelids. So many free figures of a bygone and revolutionary timepaved the night with moments of collective ecstasy, collected in an edition of a thousand copies.
