H er face is covered, but you can tell it’s Ivana Trump from her beehive. The picture was taken in 1990, at a fashion show in the gilded environs of New York hotel the Plaza. She sits alone, surrounded by empty chairs, as rapacious photographers press in from behind, while hotel security guards loom from one side.
A trio of well-dressed guests appear to laugh in her direction. The photograph is one of the highlights from a new book by Dafydd Jones. New York: High Life/Low Life features images taken between 1988 and 1999, when the Wales-born society photographer moved to the US to work for titles including Vanity Fair and the New York Observer.
Prior to his move, Jones was best known for his refreshingly unvarnished party pictures of 1980s upper-crust English society (he has released two successful books on this subject – Oxford: The Last Hurrah and England: The Last Hurrah ). He did much of his work at Tatler, when Tina Brown was shaking the magazine up as its new editor, and was open to society photos that took a photojournalistic approach. His style has remained constant since.
One of the reasons Jones eventually left Tatler a few years after Brown did, was that a new editor “said something about smiling ...
And actually, around the time that I left, if you look in those copies of the magazine, every single person at a party is smiling,” he says, “which is quite limiting.” The New York book is an evocative historical document, brimming with nostalgia and menace..
