NCS
—
Photographer Dafydd Jones’ Hollywood party photos are suffering from Oscars. They sit casually on star-studded dinner tables and are wielded by celebrities earlier than the press. In some circumstances, the golden statuettes are even getting used like tickets to enter Vanity Fair’s unique after-party.
“I think Vanity Fair had a (policy that) anyone who had an Oscar could come in,” mentioned Jones, who labored for the journal from the Eighties, in a video interview. “They had a guestlist as well. But if you had an Oscar, you could demand entry or just be let in.”
“I’ve also been at parties where people have left them behind absentmindedly and wanted to get them back,” he added.
Throughout the Nineties and 2000s, Jones was flown to Los Angeles from New York or London to shoot main award ceremonies — and the various events held earlier than and after. The British photographer’s new ebook, “Hollywood: Confidential,” options nearly 80 of his candid pictures, exhibiting high-profile friends dancing, smoking, gossiping and even (within the case of 1993 Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei) within the center of consuming an hors d’oeuvre.
The photos span A-list occasions, from bashes thrown by main film studios to smaller non-public events. Some of the earliest date again to when after-parties hosted by expertise agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar have been the place to be seen on Oscars night time. But given Jones’ employer on the time, most of the pictures have been shot at Vanity Fair’s Oscars party, which was first held in 1994 to fill a void left by Lazar’s dying.
“It felt more like the end of the whole evening. A lot of the people who came to that party had started off attending the awards, then they’d gone to the Governors Ball dinner and, after that, it was the Vanity Fair party,” Jones mentioned, including: “People were just enjoying themselves, relaxing and celebrating achievements.”
At the start, Jones mentioned he was one of solely three photographers (alongside Annie Leibovitz and Alan Berliner) permitted contained in the party. As a end result — and because of his documentarian strategy and “unintrusive” digicam — many of his photos have a pure, unguarded really feel.
The photographer’s ebook captures moments of unadulterated delight: Minnie Driver and Charlize Theron arm in arm; Kim Basinger clutching the Oscar she gained for “L.A. Confidential” in 1998; Gwyneth Paltrow, glass in hand, on the night time she was named Best Actress for “Shakespeare in Love.” Elsewhere, a pair of photos present Tom Cruise (who had entered the party by way of a again door) gleefully reuniting with “Jerry Maguire” co-star Cuba Gooding Jr. (who had entered by way of the entrance door) following the latter’s Best Supporting Actor win in 1997.
“I don’t set pictures up, and I don’t hold people up either,” Jones mentioned of his capturing model, including: “Sometimes (celebrities) go to a party and that’s it. They don’t want to be photographed. They’ve just spent the last eight hours probably being photographed and interviewed.”
His fame typically helped, nevertheless. “A lot of people, over the years, have been aware of my pictures and knew what they looked like. They knew I wouldn’t want (them) to pose or stand in front of me doing anything in particular. So, they’re quite relaxed.”
Jones, in flip, was by no means starstruck, regardless of the admiration he held for a lot of of his topics. His work was not all in regards to the friends anyway; he was simply as within the spectacle surrounding the events because the events themselves.
The cowl of his ebook doesn’t characteristic an A-list superstar however as a substitute, a microphone-wielding Kevin Meaney, the comic, as he reported from the purple carpet for HBO. Jones additionally turned his lens on parking valets, publicists, empty Rolls Royces and his fellow photographers as they packed into the press pen or staked out venue entranceways behind velvet ropes.
“There (would be) this huge lineup of press, film crews and journalists, all yelling at people as they go in — to try and get their attention, take a picture of them and get a quote,” Jones mentioned. “It was that scene that interested me, just as much as the celebrities.”
Several of the photographs in Jones’ ebook have by no means been revealed earlier than. One of them (a rueful Mick Jagger alongside Madonna and Tony Curtis) merely wasn’t chosen by Vanity Fair’s editors, regardless of being among the many photographer’s favorites. Others have been shot for a journal that folded earlier than the images might be revealed.
Yet, this latter episode however, his photos seize a golden age for print magazines, which have been then making sufficient cash to fly photographers all over the world to cowl events. In the late Nineties, Jones even started witnessing what he known as “photographer inflation” each inside and out of doors Hollywood occasions, together with Vanity Fair’s.
Jones sensed that photographers’ position was changing into extra about promotion than reportage. And the inflow impacted his work — not essentially on account of competitors, however as a result of it was “the beginning of people wanting eye contact in pictures.”
“I don’t mind if people look at me when I’m taking a photograph, but I’ve never demanded eye contact from my subjects,” he mentioned. “Then, if you’ve got a lot of photographers saying, ‘Oh, will you look at me? Can you stand there, please?’ It interferes with the party and also made it harder for me to work.”
In any case, Jones mentioned he “never wanted to be a career Hollywood photographer.” He loved passing by means of LA for giant occasions, however he constructed a profession within the UK, the place he labored for a number of main newspapers and is famend for documenting the excesses of British high society.
By comparability, Jones mirrored, Hollywood’s A-list was quite restrained. “They weren’t letting loose in the same way as the English parties,” he mentioned, including that celebrities are “almost harder to photograph because they’re worried about what sort of pictures” would possibly get taken.
“They’re very much choreographed events.”
“Hollywood: Confidential,” revealed by ACC Art Books, is out there now. A range of photos from the ebook is on present at 45 Park Lane in London till April 20, 2025.