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‘Every night was Halloween’ – how one ‘camera girl’ captured the madcap style of 80s New York

Grace Jones, David Bowie and Debbie Harry feature alongside lesser known dancers in Sharon Smith’s Polaroids of the city’s club scene, where dressing up was your passport into the creative world

You certainly couldn’t turn up in army fatigues and a patched-up blue-jean skirt, which is what Smith had worn before becoming a “camera girl” in 1979, taking pictures of partygoers in the city’s sweatiest clubs between the hours of midnight and 4am every week. Photograph: Sharon SmithThe outfits that did get people in – shiny, madcap and electric, not a bit like the more corporate-inflected shoulder pad and pie-crust collar 80s styles currently enjoying a renaissance – are documented in all their effervescent glory in Smith’s new book, Camera Girl. As Honey Dijon notes in the book: “Today, to get past the red rope you just have to pay, but back then you had to have a look or a vibe or a witty repartee – there had to be something about you – to pass through that door.” For some that might sound like a lot of pressure.

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