Insta-Glamour

  Wonderful it was looking at these photos in The Cut from someone I had never had of before. Antonio Lopez was glamorous and knew glamorous people and that shows in his photographs. Looking at the photos which were made with an inexpensive Instamatic camera they look current because of today's trendy use of filtered photos made to look old through applications such as Instagram or Lightroom. Lopez's photos though are authentic and are shot on 110 and 126 film like the first film I ever used in the early 1980s. However, my photos are nothing even remotely as interesting or glamorous as his since he was a glamorous person that knew glamorous people in a glamorous time in New York and Paris with disco and outrageous fashion dominating that cultural period.

Lopez wasn't a photographer by trade but instead he was a fashion illustrator. He did work for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Interview, Elle and the New York Times. He was however friends and neighbors with the legendary photographer Bill Cunningham. Lopez was actually friends with lots of famous people from the 70s and 80s jet set from Jessica Lange, Grace Coddington, Pat Cleveland, Jerry Hall, Karl Lagerfeld, Grace Jones to Tina Chow among others. Being surrounded by that much intense star power in that decadent time will provide plenty of glamour to photograph.

You can view more of his photos at the Danziger Gallery website and in person too when a show opens next month displaying his photography.

Though I am aware of and familiar with all the names surrounding Antonio Lopez, I wasn't familiar with him until today. He died at the age of 44 in 1987 from complications from AIDS. He was another victim of that time when AIDS was new and ravaging the creative world unabated.

A documentary covering a time in Lopez's life in the late 60s and 70s has been made and I will have to go see it. The film is called Antonio Lopez: Sex, Fashion and Disco.



Here's a review of the film in The Guardian.