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Mixing it in high society     by Nina Caplan  

Back in the 1980s, when celebrities were still largely titled and hyphenated, Tatler editor Tina Brown and young photographer Dafydd Jones turned the magazine's party pages from the stuff of toffs' photo albums into a spectator sport. Jones managed the seemingly impossible: dignified pictures of the gilded doing extremely undignified things.   Whether it was young bloods dancing or debutantes relaxing, Jones made them look both attractive - all those colt-legged young women and their floppy-haired counterparts - and privileged to the point of witlessness. And when Brown went Stateside, Jones found a different society to photograph, some of whom, such as the loose-lipped ladies clutching Daschunds faced with doggy canapes at a pooch party, weren't really very different at all. Some, of course, were: there is slyly intimate commentary, but less outright indignity, to Jones's photos of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Madonna and Prince at A-list parties. Arguably Jones's greatest talent is his feel for atmosphere, both individual and general, and his style has altered along with the celebrity scene he photographs.  

These days, he snaps the pervasive launches, full of twominute stars, that are such a contrast to Tatler debs' balls. But also, as if in reaction to a social whirl that increasingly resembles a tornado, he takes panoramic shots of London, sometimes using time-lapse.   It seems that Jones's life mission is to broaden the narrow world of high society, making it both flatter (a party photo) and more rounded (depicting real people who often look foolish). But you can't help wondering what his photos - as wide and luxurious as the world they depict is constrained and luxurious - say about the zeitgeist.