"Vanity Fair's Oscar Night Party"

17.09.05
Contacts
The Saturday Times Magazine

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PHOTOGRAPHER DAFYDD JONES
YEAR 1997
LOCATION LOS ANGELES

“I love this picture,” says Dafydd Jones, who went to photograph the Vanity Fair Oscar Night Party in 1997. “It was such a good sequence of events . First Mick Jagger was sitting by himself looking bored, and then I saw Madonna cross the room and sit down next to him. She started talking and he became quite animated. Then Tony Curtis came along and sat down at the same table and started monopolising Madonna. Jagger was laughing when he saw Curtis coming up. I guess he knew he would take over Madonna and he would be left on his own again.”
Jones has photographed thousands of parties and knows the psychology of the manoeuvrings that go on. “Some people do get miserable at parties if they’re left on their own, but Jagger didn’t seem to mind too much. He was in Hollywood because he’d just bought the film rights to Enigma. He seemed quite happy just watching other people at the party.” Vanity Fair holds its party en route to many of the other post-Academy Awards parties and is able to ambush famous people on their way. That night they caught Bette Midler, Muhammad Ali, Marianne Faithfull, Gabriel Byrne and many others in their net. “I was pleased when I took that picture because it’s different from the bog-standard picture of people grinning. Unfortunatly Vanity Fair didn’t publish it which was one of the reasons I left the magazine. I love this picture because it tells a story.”
JOANNA PITMAN