Hamiltons presents We Dance in Mysteries, their newest exhibition by Nick Waplington, following the artist’s highly acclaimed 2024 show, Living Room, at the gallery.
With his daylight hours filled with the creativity and chaos of Isaac Mizrahi’s fashion studio, Nick Waplington turned his lens by night to the pounding and equally innovative world of the New York City house and techno scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The two sets of images are riotously juxtaposed in We Dance in Mysteries to embody the vibrancy of a vanished moment in New York’s cultural history.
In the autumn of 1989, photographer Nick Waplington was introduced to fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi through their mutual friend, the titan of photography Richard Avedon. This initial meeting would turn into a three-year working and personal relationship, resulting in a collection of photographs of the goings-on behind the scenes at Mizrahi’s studio in downtown Manhattan. Waplington’s images show supermodels such as Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Veronica Webb in the midst of endless fittings and adjustments for a number of Mizrahi’s acclaimed collections.
The clubs that Waplington also documents include The Sound Factory and Save The Robots. These clubs were spaces where time was suspended, boundaries were porous and evolving, and music was everything. Now long-gone and almost mythical emblems to future generations of clubbers, these institutions were places of worship where people made pilgrimages to dance, sweat and experiment.
Waplington’s own unique style grants us access to a golden moment where the worlds of fashion, art and music offered limitless expression and unadulterated freedom. In these images, the seam that separates night and day holds a crackling electricity and invites us to experience the burning intensity of a now-vanished world.
Nick Waplington : We Dance in Mysteries – The Isaac Mizrahi Photographs
Until September 23, 2025
Hamiltons
13 Carlos Place
London, W1K 2EU
www.hamiltonsgallery.com
