HOW WE USED TO DO IT: Long before smartphones lit up dance floors, I was documenting the nocturnal pulse of the city, capturing raw, unfiltered street style and the fleeting moments of beauty, chaos, and vulnerability that define nightlife for magazines.
My work includes a series of documentary films on nightlife culture produced for DR2 and VICE, as well as extensive street photography shot in the pre-iPhone era—when the club was a sanctuary, not a stage – a temporary autonomous zone, not an Instagram backdrop. The phones have taken over, so photography is increasingly restricted in clubs – a notable feature in a surveillance society. No photos, we are stars tonight.
Consequently, I’ve returned to my memory archive. What I’ve unearthed are dreamlike fragments—images that shimmer with hyperreal sweat, smoke, desire, and defiance.
These photographs are nostalgic dream capsules from a virtual pre-surveillance era, when presence wasn’t curated for a feed, but lived in the moment, and generated at a safe distance with no physical presence. 
