A new photography book documenting the work of Antonio Lopez has sparked emotional responses from those who lived through the vibrant creative period it captures. Elizabeth Avedon declined to write an article about Lopez's upcoming book published by Twin Palms, describing it as "pain, a lifestyle that has disappeared, deaths that are still painful," despite acknowledging the book's sublime quality.
The book covers fifteen pivotal years in cultural history from 1969 to 1984, a period that witnessed the birth of unprecedented sexual freedom for both heterosexual and homosexual communities. Lopez, along with his creative partner and soul brother Juan, became central figures in this transformative era that would later be devastated by the AIDS epidemic.
Antonio Lopez was known for his flamboyant personality, charisma, and exceptional talent that placed him ahead of his time. He possessed a provocative and seductive nature, serving as a surprising Pygmalion figure who discovered future stars Jessica Lange and Jerry Hall in Paris when they were just 17-year-old students from Texas. His keen eye for talent and ability to spot potential became legendary in fashion and entertainment circles.
Both Lopez's apartment in Saint-Germain and his studio-loft in New York became epicenters of some of the era's most fabulous parties. These gatherings featured sublime women and seductive men in endless celebrations marked by heterogeneous encounters and boundless provocation. Lopez meticulously recorded all of these carefully staged settings, creating a visual archive of the period's creative energy and social dynamics.
The early 1980s brought what many described as an apocalypse in the form of AIDS, which devastated the creative community that Lopez had documented. The disease destroyed much of the period's creativity, with imagination, craziness, and dreams disappearing week by week as the community mourned each new burial. The epidemic marked the end of an era of innocence and creative freedom that had defined the previous decade and a half.
The photographs in Lopez's collection serve as surviving testimony to this lost world and represent a crucial historical record of a time when artistic expression flourished without the shadow of the coming tragedy. "Instamatics Antonio Lopez," published by Twin Palms in 2011, features 85 four-color plates across 160 pages in an 11 x 14 inch first edition casebound format, retailing for $75.00 with ISBN 978-1-931885-94-2.
