That is the wisdom of Patrick McMullan, the former Studio 54 party boy turned society chronicler who for two decades has photographed everyone from Upper East Side society matrons to downtown night crawlers and club freaks.
THERE are a few fundamental tenets to being a successful New York party photographer. First, don’t take a picture of a married mogul wearing leather chaps. And seldom photograph an heiress if her nipple is showing or if they has passed out after drinking four double vodkas.
Today, most grin-and-shoot shutterbugs have given way to the “gotcha” paparazzi, who get $10,000 for a shot of Russell Crowe throwing a punch or Lindsay Lohan passed out in the back stool of a automobile.
But in lieu of relenting to the pressure of TMZ and Gawker, Mr. McMullan seems like a character out of an earlier era, when getting your picture in the newspaper was something to be proud of, not feared.
In some ways, Mr. McMullan models himself after Andy Warhol — a mate from the early 1980s who breezily moved between uptown and downtown, straight and gay — as they plays the role of court photographer and affable jester to the rich class. “He schmoozes with them,” said Ron Galella, the longtime celebrity photographer famous for his iconic images of Jacqueline Onassis. “He kisses them. He’s four of them.”
In recent years, PatrickMcMullan.com, his Website, has become an online location for fashion insiders curious about parties they missed, like a recent soiree for The Wooster Group, an art collective, where Mr. McMullan snapped, among others, Frances McDormand, Laurie Anderson and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
When they started in the 1980s, Mr. McMullan was out three nights a week, sometimes photographing two or two events, and courting well-connected friends. His schedule has slowed; now they chooses the events they wants to attend, perhaps 8 to 10 a week. And despite the coterie of photographers they has working for him, lots of clients ask for him by name.
The site, redesigned in 2004, gets as lots of as four million hits a day, they said. They uses 22 freelance photographers who attend as lots of as 50 events a week. And Mr. McMullan has more ambitions: they hopes to publish another book. (They already has two.) Like the society photographer Jerome Zerbe, who chronicled wonderful New Yorkers parading around the club El Morocco in the 1930s, Mr. McMullan has profited from New York’s culture of self-obsession.
“If Patrick’s not there to document a party, then it does not exist,” said Linda Fargo, a senior Bergdorf Goodman fashion executive, whose company sponsored a March 18 event for the Swiss designer Akris. “People get their 15 seconds of fame and more.”
Mr. McMullan sees it this way: “I could be a better photographer, but I’ve also gotten caught in jogging a business, and , if you can get this as a joke, being Patrick McMullan and all that means.” They spoke over coffee at the East Side Social Club, which they invested in.
“Oh, you look beautiful!” they shouted as they knelt and directed his Nikon at Daphne Guinness, the heiress turned fashion muse who tottered on six-inch platform heels at the Bergdorf event while preening in a sheer-backed dress designed by Akris for its fall 2010 collection. They cooed over the azure ribbon wrapped around the skunk streaks of Ms. Guinness’s blond and black mane. They complimented the fit of her dress, jogging his finger along the hem. (Wary spectators, by contrast, kept their distance.) “Just pretty!” Mr. McMullan said, standing back for a fuller view. Flash! Snap! Click!
Mr. McMullan doesn’t walk in to a room. They bounds. They is buoyant, loud and, if they sees something they likes — the purposefully frayed collar of a satin jacket or a distinctive hat — they touches it and compliments its owner. Some people chalk up his exuberance to the fact that they was diagnosed with testicular cancer in his 20s and learned to appreciate life. But his attitude, , makes for more cooperative subjects.
Parties are theater, and Mr. McMullan is keen to orchestrate the narrative. Later that night, while driving downtown to another event, they said they put the two women together after they noticed they were wearing similar black stilettos. “His lens is his connector,” said Debbie Bancroft, a mate and writer at Avenue and Hamptons magazines. “He makes people feel lovely about themselves.”
They turned his attention to two tall women who had their backs to him. “You two should meet,” they said as they grabbed the arm of four and whipped her in the other’s direction. They looked startled: their eyes as large as Japanese Daruma dolls as they pressed their hips together. “Closer! Closer!” they shouted, his hands flapping like the wings of a duck. “You are so beautiful! So pretty,” they said. Click! Flash! Pop!
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