Bronques is my modern day inspiration.

Merlin is a creature of the nightlife, partying hard and photographing partygoers for his site Last Night’s Party. More often than not an R-rated photographic chronicle of the downtown demimonde that has become as desirable a showcase for club kids as the pages of W magazine are to Park Avenue socialites.

Despite the heat from the critics, the site’s popularity shows no signs of waning. In fact, the fun-at-all-costs message seems to be spreading. While a life of seven-nights-a-week clubbing might wear on some people, Bronques seems to thrive on it.

“You know that song by Arcade Fire that goes ‘Sleeping is giving in’? That’s my anthem.”

Combining the best of glamorous pinup photography with a lush, urban aesthetic, and his photos capture the vibrancy of New York life and its most lusty citizens. His passion for his craft is clear in the way he describes his work and his nonstop clicking. When not walking the city streets hoping for a glimpse of his next top model. He finds them anywhere and everywhere, and believes, “With a complete stranger you can explore sides of yourself that you never could with family, friends and even your significant other.”

The photoblogging phenomenon has helped convince regular people they are amazing enough to get their photo taken. Merlin and Mark Hunter of thecobrasnake.com. Coupled with the digital-photography boom and the prevalence of photobloggers, a paparazzi-type feel has erupted at every nightclub—places where not too long ago, anyone, famous or not, could let loose anonymously. Now people don’t just want you to take their photos, they expect it. Nightclubs are their red carpet, the (insert club name) and (insert club name) are their movie premieres, and lastnightsparty.com and thecobrasnake.com are their Us Weekly and Star magazines.

And actually, I have a confession to make that just became clear after that last paragraph. I hate, I mean hate with a passion that burns with the power of a thousand suns, reality T.V. Any form of it. I’m talking everything from the Hills to Cops. And even though shows like Man vs. Wild, the Girls next door, and Dirty Jobs have all at times captured my attention and heart, I am sickened by that form of “entertainment.” But the concept of reality T.V. isn’t that far off from what club photographing is all about. Making the average and most of the time not-so-average person a celebrity by a single photo. And I have to admit, as a person who’s struggled his whole life knowing that the odds of being a true celebrity are slim to none…it makes me feel a little warm inside feeling as though I’m handsome enough, fashionable enough, dare I say even funny enough to have my photo taken and posted online in a very tabloid-esque manner.

“The first time I ever took pictures at Happy Ending, there were no other photographers there,” Bronques says. “People asked, ‘Why would you want to take pictures here? There are no celebrities here.’ But I love blurring the line between celebrity and the kids. A lot of the kids I photograph are as cool as any celebrity that I photograph.”

Bronques sees party photographers as an addition to the nightlife experience: “You have a cool DJ that plays good music, go-go dancers that hype the atmosphere, a host that makes it look cool, and a photographer who adds that sense of glamour to it. It helps a party.” You can trace that idea to Studio 54—all of us are in some way paying homage to the documentation of that glitzy era. But back then, nightclub photography wasn’t so commonplace. It meant something to get your picture taken.

Up here in Boston, the club photographer who is extremely well known throughout the indie hipster scene is David Day, who takes photos for the site, Nicky Digital. He’s snapped my photo a bunch of times. Most notably these gems:

Click image to see a short slideshow of images, RSS readers, please go to actual post.

In the indie-verse the most ‘popular’ club photographers are: Merlin Bronques, MisShapes, The Cobra Snake, and Nicky Digital (if you don’t know these names, you’re either over 35 years old or need to seriously re-read your Hipster Handbook).

You might say I’m a little obsessed with sex and the exploitation thereof. Things that ooze and drip sex I love. So, what Merlin shoots is like art to me. It is art in fact. And the thing is, it’s not even just the sexual photos, it’s the photos he takes of gallivanting around the world. Shots of being on a plane or in a cab going somewhere. Walking down the street and taking amazing photos of that cities current newspaper. It’s all completely random but, it all tells a story. It’s his life in photographs.

I’m sure there have been hundreds of other artists/photographers who have done this very thing. But, he continues to capture my eyes, brain, and heart with every thing he shoots so I had to write about him and his work because I am in awe on a weekly basis and that awe cannot go not talked about.

Since it would seem most of my friends and people I know who read this blog, tend to a) dislike the sex-ploitation of women b) dislike hipsters and c) don’t like reading my reviews (based on Google Analytics) I’ll assume none of my friends have read anything past the first paragraph so I won’t even warn them that the visual content they skipped to is most definitely NSFW.

Not only does he snap photos but he makes short videos and writes even shorter stories. Both of which are almost better than the photo he takes. Here are some of my favorite pieces of work done by him (video, word, and photos):

These movies are probably the two greatest pieces of video that have ever been shot, and I mean that.

Here’s two of my favorite things he’s written:

You call me into your meetings and you have so many new ideas. You’re going to put New York City back on the map. You’re going to put the “life” back into “nightlife”. Hey, have you met my friend Michelle? She just moved here. She’s 18 years old and she makes her own outfits. She’s friends with all the drag queens that hang out at The Box and she gets table comps at Avenue and the Boom Boom Room. They love her at Rose Bar. She missed everything. The Beatrice days, the Misshapes days, the Ruff Club days, the Motherfucker days, the We Bite days and the Happy Valley days. She doesn’t care. She’ll go see Frog at Happy Ending because he makes her laugh and he always plays the Beatles. Opening Ceremony wants her to be a brand ambassador. She hardly wears any make-up. They say she looks like early Kate Moss but they don’t know what to do with those big boobs on her little frame. She gets in everywhere. When she goes to Brooklyn, she goes there to dance. She discovered BK when Hiro Ballroom almost killed the scene and before Webster came back to try to save it. She was just visiting back then, and all her friends wanted to go to Marquee because Time Out Magazine said it was a hot, but she followed a photographer to a warehouse party across the river. They took the L train on a night where it was actually working and they saw Thelophius London for the first time. Will she come to your parties when you start saving New York? Probably not, because she’s moving to LA.

People come in and out of the scene like seasons. When we haven’t seen someone in a while, we know that we’ve probably lost them to an overdose… or a relationship. When these new relationships start, it’s always with the best intentions that nothing will change. But slowly and gradually it happens. The new couple starts to leave the parties earlier and earlier until eventually they start hosting dinners at home instead. People bring wine and they talk about their little projects. Like the one’s they’re developing together, a catering business or a clothing store or a fashion line and they talk about how they’ve started going to the gym and they’re doing cardio and that they have an awesome personal trainer with a Russian name. They’re being more “productive”. They’re “growing up”. Eventually, there are less dinners, or rather, the kids “not-in-relationships” get invited less and less and the lovely couple suddenly disappears. Off the radar, just like that, and the party people stop trying to call, and everybody’s life just goes on.

And it’s always when we least expect it, you know, when we’ve finally found peace with our new dancing partners for “Lust For Life” and Arcade Fire and when we have new people to do Patron shots with, that one of them re-appears again with a brand new haircut and some cute clothes telling us and everyone else how they really lost themselves in that last relationship. It was good, they don’t regret it, but New York City isn’t made for settling down. They can’t wait to re-connect with themselves and their old friends again. But, you know, it’s never as comfortable as the last time around. There’s too many new faces. The party names have changed, the DJs are “mixing harder”, and after the over-emotional, over-compensating hugs that last as if we were Vietnam vets reunited, they realize that they have changed too and that they have nothing in common with the new regime.

Here is a very small group of photos I’ve collected from his site that I think are wonderful. RSS readers, please go to actual post:

Get ready for a controversial statement:

I can’t wait for the future. Not because I WANT to hit women. But because I’m tired of women AND men wanting equality but only picking and choosing the benefits and positives of equality. You want equality? You get all of it. The good AND bad.

For those of you wondering what the context of this image is, well, the blue and gold clad super hero above is Booster Gold and he’s from the 25th century who came to the 21st century for some reason, I don’t remember why. And the all white seemingly nude lady is actually a villain who wears all white spandex who commits crimes with a gang of super villains called The Royal Flush Gang.

Dear ladies,

Is this my problem? Do I play from the heart first instead of playing by the rules first?

Tell me honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly.

Leave it to a Tumblr image to put what I’m doing wrong into a context I understand.

What you are looking at is 25 boxes filled with comic books that I have been collecting since 1989. In 1996, I estimated based on amateur comic grading, that my collection at the time was worth $3000. Since then the collection has tripled possibly even quadrupled. However, most of the multiplying has been due to the purchasing of recent comics that you can find anywhere and not old or rare one’s that are hard to come by so the demand for my books makes my collection otherwise worthless, at least for the rest of MY life. Hopefully this collection will stick around for my children and/or grandkids to reap the benefits.

Choke on your candor you self fulfilling prophesying fucks.

C 
yrus, you are full fair, ’tis true, but Gaga is fairer than you.
 
 
Just saying…

YES!
Thank god for whoever redeemed Calvin from this shit…

Art by: creyooo (I think)