Galerie Thomas Zander presents a series of seventy black and white photographs from the legendary New York night club Studio 54, that was frequented by the likes of Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger and Grace Jones. Papageorge always had his camera at hand and between 1978 and 1980 he celebrated with the rich and beautiful, the artists and starlets; even today viewers can witness the eccentric and hedonistic party nights in his photographs. They revive the feeling of the disco era and express a profoundly urban spirit of directness, which condensed in New York at that time.


In the 1960s, Tod Papageorge had a close artistic exchange with Garry Winogrand. Both artists used to meet almost daily to take photographs in the streets of New York. During those days, some icons of photography history originated, which with their intuition and intensity exude a unique kind of lightness. As a recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a teaching professor at Yale University for many years, Papageorge’s influence on contemporary photography can hardly be overestimated. Renowned photographers like Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Gregory Crewdson, or Anna Gaskell were among his students. All of Tod Papageorge’s works are based on an interest in people as social beings. Be it his images of sports stadiums, his photographs of everyday life in Central Park or the images from Studio 54, in all his photographs people are characterized through the group they belong to and their experience of the present moment. His works are intense portraits of America marked by a powerful authenticity.