{"id":95939,"date":"2024-10-11T18:47:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T18:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=95939"},"modified":"2024-10-11T18:47:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T18:47:34","slug":"dustin-pittman-grazia-usa-fall-2024","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/dustin-pittman-grazia-usa-fall-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC After Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Halston surrounded by an entourage including Bianca Jagger, Victor Hugo, Karen Bjornson, Nancy North, Bill Dugan, and Connie Cook at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute\u2019s gala The Eighteenth-Century Woman, 1981. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

B<\/span>rothers Mauricio and Roger Padilha, co-authors of a culty series of Rizzoli monographs chronicling the work of Antonio Lopez, Stephen Sprouse, and other colorful New York characters, trace their love of all things downtown to studying the boldface names on the party pages in W <\/i>magazine as Long Island teens in the 1980s. \u201cThis one time when I was 16, I told our parents I wanted to go to the Palladium to meet Dianne Brill,\u201d Mauricio recalls. \u201cThey said, \u2018You can go, but you have to bring your 13-year-old brother so you guys can keep an eye on each other.\u2019\u201d This was in the days before clubs bothered to card, so off the boys went on the LIRR, inaugurating a series of extracurricular nightlife adventures where they met many of their glossy heroes. The Padilhas\u2019 latest effort, Dustin Pittman: New York After Dark<\/i><\/a>, adds to their demimonde pantheon the very nightlife photographer who shot the party pictures that first captured their imagination.<\/p>\n

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Pat Cleveland, Martin Snaric, Halston, and Marina Schiano at Regine\u2019s, 1980. Klaus Nomi performing at Xenon, 1979. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They worked with Pittman to catalog close to 300 of his archival images spanning the years 1969 to 1983, many previously unpublished, including photos of Andy Warhol, Halston, Bianca Jagger, Lou Reed, Madonna, and assorted anonymous partygoers. \u201cDustin is compulsive about photographing, but he\u2019s not one for archiving and labeling,\u201d says Roger. \u201cHe literally just photographs, throws the film in a box, and then goes out again. He takes thousands of photos every night, and he shoots every night of the week still to this day.\u201d The book is a veritable time capsule of a still-gritty Gotham where the uptown vibe of Regine\u2019s\u2014a society disco that required tuxedos and evening gowns for entry\u2014and the punk sensibility of the downtown rock club Max\u2019s Kansas City met on the dance floor at Studio 54.<\/p>\n

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Lou Reed in NYC, 1974. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pittman grew up far from this heady orbit on a farm in the Adirondacks, and his success is due to a combination of grit and a series of fortuitous encounters with the glitterati. He discovered the art of photography aged seven at the Treasure Island newsstand at the local mall. \u201cI said, \u2018Mom, I know you\u2019re going to be about three hours so let me stay here and look at magazines,\u2019\u2019\u2019 Pittman recalls. A Boys Club of America photography course taught him the basic principles of composition. \u201cI would photograph my cows and just keep on practicing,\u201d he says. Pittman got his first taste of city life when as a teen in the 1960s he took the Greyhound Bus down to New York to attend Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix gigs with his older brother who was living in the Village. But it was a chance meeting with Liza Minnelli when he was hired as a local production assistant for the 1969 film The Sterile Cuckoo <\/i>shot near his home in Hamilton County that clinched the idea of making it in the city that doesn\u2019t sleep. \u201cLiza said I should come to New York and go to art school,\u201d Pittman says.<\/p>\n

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Diana Vreeland and Liza Minnelli at Studio 54, 1979. Guests dancing at Studio 54, circa 1977\u201379. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He enrolled at School of Visual Arts after attending Woodstock, trading the barnyard for Bethesda Fountain where he took to shooting Super Eight films of the artists and activists\u2014including a few Warhol superstars\u2014who congregated in Central Park on Sundays. \u201cIngrid Superstar said that she wanted me to meet somebody,\u201d Pittman says. \u201cShe took me down to The Factory and introduced me to Andy.\u201d Pittman\u2019s credits his time at 33 Union Square West with helping nurture his cinema verit\u00e9\u2013like photographic style. There\u2019s an uncommon intimacy to Pittman\u2019s celebrity photos, thanks to his being friends with many of his subjects. Ask for the story behind, say, a picture of Divine sporting a magnificent pouf hairstyle at Karl Lagerfeld\u2019s Versailles-themed Studio 54 party, and he\u2019ll tell you how they were once neighbors and he\u2019d see the drag icon taking out the garbage in house slippers.<\/p>\n

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Andy Warhol at Studio 54 New Year\u2019s Eve Celebration, NYC, 1979. Divine at Karl Lagerfeld\u2019s Versailles party at Studio 54, NYC, 1979. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During this period, Pittman found cheap accommodation in Alphabet City where he stayed for years. \u201cI paid $12.50 a month for a railroad apartment with a pull chain toilet and a bathtub in the kitchen that I used as a table on 14th Street between Avenues C and D,\u201d he says. \u201cIt gave me the freedom to go out and pursue my artistic dreams and passions because of the low overhead.\u201d As for how Pittman came to specialize in nightlife photography, he insists that he\u2019s never thought of it as such. \u201cDay for night, night for day\u2014it was all like one,\u201d he says. \u201cI always had my camera with me.\u201d A typical 24-hour period might start with late afternoon brunch at Max\u2019s Kansas City (owner Mickey Ruskin would put out chicken wings and chickpeas for the regulars), followed by a Velvet Underground gig; shooting vignettes in the back room with Andrea Whips, Eric Emerson, and other friends from the Factory crew; then ending up at someone\u2019s loft in the wee hours for an impromptu jam session.<\/p>\n

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Jackie Kennedy Onassis spots Dustin Pittman, 1979. Brooke Shields and Jack Nicholson at Calvin Klein\u2019s apartment before going to Studio 54, 1981. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the decade went on and Pittman\u2019s reputation grew, he was given swishier assignments like covering the Met Gala, and he continued to befriend everyone he encountered from Vogue<\/i>\u2019s imperious editor Diana Vreeland to swans C.Z. Guest, Nan Kempner, and Pat Buckley. \u201cWhen I photographed Jackie O., she didn\u2019t treat me as a paparazzi,\u201d Pittman says. \u201cWe\u2019d be in the Temple of Dendur, and she would sit down with me at one of the tables and have a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Studio 54\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve celebration, 1979. Photo Credit: Dustin Pittman, used with permission of Rizzoli New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Volumes have been written about the legendary Studio 54, but Pittman says what made it so great was its democratic sensibility. \u201cAt Studio 54 it didn\u2019t matter if you were from Beverly Hills or Bensonhurst, they let all kinds of people in,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was the first club where you could be from anywhere and dance with Diana Ross or Liz Taylor.\u201d Among his favorite photos is a wide-angle shot of New Year\u2019s Eve revelers on the dance floor captured at the stroke of midnight. \u201cIt was like being in Oz, except I didn\u2019t want to go home to Kansas,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA’<\/em>s Fall Issue featuring cover star Demi Lovato<\/a>:<\/strong><\/h4>\n