In the Limelight: The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 1990s is the terrific new book of photographs by Steve Eichner,  written by Gabriel H. Sanchez with a foreword by Peter Gatien.

Anyone on NYC’s fashion circuit over the past two decades will know Steve, camera in hand, from all the best parties and events he chronicled for WWD. Admittedly, I am a little biased here. I worked very closely with him during my 15 years as a reporter for the fashion bible, and we tag-teamed on many major events, from CFDA Awards and Met Galas to Marc Jacobs’ legendary holiday parties. One time, we traveled to Miami together where he photographed Karl Lagerfeld at The Raleigh. Steve has a sense for the moment and captures it – the look, the vibe, the energy, everything – through his lens.

There was something electric about early 1990s New York, especially at places like Club USA, one of Peter Gatien’s mega-clubs featured in the book — the neon billboards, the Thierry Mugler room, the music, the people always made for a memorable experience (and I am speaking from my own experience). Club life and fashion were inextricably linked.

“Bold experiments in music, fashion, art, and sexuality set the tone for decades to come and established a new paradigm of American culture, on that extends well beyond the realms of nightlife and entertainment,” Sanchez writes in the introduction. “In these clubs, every breed of New Yorker – from candy-eyed ravers to Wall Street suits – intermingled with respect and longing for an unforgettable night.”

In the Limelight, published by Prestel, captures this moment in the city’s history. In time for the book’s launch, we spoke to Steve Eichner about his careers, NYC nightlife, and whether the energy will ever come back to New York.

Tell me a bit about your background and how you got into photographing the club scene.

I grew up in Long Beach, N.Y., and one of my first jobs was in a camera and electronics store. I learned all about cameras and how they worked, film, and developing. Photography became my hobby and I would go to concerts, bring my camera, and sit up as close to the stage as possible. I continued this through high school. I briefly studied accounting because my dad was an accountant, but I failed miserably. Luckily, I continued shooting and after a semester off, re-enrolled in college with a photography major. I excelled and graduated, then moved to Manhattan in 1987 with the sole goal of making a career in music photography. No safety net.

I stumbled upon the club scene by being out every night shooting bands. Some of the clubs doubled as concert venues. I met a club kid named Really Denise, then RuPaul and James St James, and I got a taste of the models and celebrities in the VIP area, like Naomi Campbell and Jean Claude van Damme. I started going to The Roxy and shooting for a nightlife magazine called Manhattan Lifestyles. I loved the club scene at first sight. As a young photographer, it had everything. I always loved to party and take photos and this was a way to combine both and make some money. So much color and energy and sexuality. Like nothing I had ever seen growing up on Long Island.

Then one night, I was shooting a Sugarcubes show and I met a woman named Michelle Feeney who had just been hired by Peter Gatien to do in-house PR for his clubs Limelight, Palladium and Tunnel (he went on to open Club USA as well). I gave her my card and a few days later she called and hired me. That’s how I met Peter Gatien and became his house photographer.

Describe the creative community of the early 1990s. What set them apart from previous eras?

The only thing like it before was Studio 54, but that was one club. The 1990s was the era of the mega-clubs and they were all over the city. In the 1990s NYC rents were affordable. Creative people could afford to live and thrive in the city. The mega clubs of the era were the primordial slime for this creative community to grow. They were a safe place for exploring sexuality, fashion, music, dance, and art. If you look at the photographs in the book, you can see how diverse the people in the clubs were. Each night I went to a different club with a new party theme and each night club kids dressed up in outrageous fashions and experimented with androgyny or cross-dressing or nudity. I think the 1990s were the first time that pushing the norms was accepted – the idea that we are all different but we can accept our difference and party together and feed off of that.

What made the clubs of the early 1990s so seductive?

The clubs were social media. If you wanted to raise your followers or build your brand you needed to go out. If you wanted to see what was going on or hear the latest music, the clubs were the place. If you wanted to meet someone to date or hook up, it was not happening in your apartment. Now you can sit in your basement or by the pool and still see what’s going on and even participate. Everything was happening at the clubs and there was something for everyone…Wall Street executives looking at Drag queens performing….celebrities dancing with kids from New Jersey. The interiors of the clubs were always changing. I never knew what to expect when I entered a club and the club kids pushed the limits of their makeup and clothing every night. The clubs were a safe-space for everyone to explore culture.

What was your favorite club of the time and why?

My favorite club was Club USA. Peter Gatien put everything he learned from his other clubs into this ultra-modern purpose-built mega club. I was already part of the Gatien Club Kids NY Nightlife family by then and I felt like it was my baby too. It was an adult playground complete with a slide. If the DJ started playing something you really wanted to dance to, you could slide from the VIP room right into the middle of the dance floor and get your groove on. It was super modern and felt like the center of the party universe and in fact, it was located in Times Square which is the center of the universe. The interior mimicked what was right outside the front door with neon lights, peep shows, and even an S&M room. Upstairs was a room designed by fashion designer Thierry Mugler. It had a cold feeling, a metallic industrial vibe with exposed steel girders and neon-lit bars. It featured a “stairway to nowhere” which was often used as seating or sucking face because no one knew what else to do on it.

What made that era so unique and special?

I think it was a finite time in history when NYC was affordable, the nightlife scene was not segmented, and people would flow from venue to venue, mixing and intermingling ideas. Experimentation was the norm and creativity was the language spoken. It was pre-social media so people were present and engaged. The cross pollination of music, dance, sexuality, art, business, and creativity of all sorts happened at that time.

From a fashion point of view, how did you see people expressing themselves?

The most outrageous fashions by far were worn by the club kids. If you want to call that fashion. They were about shock value in an almost clownish sense. Their outfits were usually put together from whatever they found that day on Canal Street – gas mask  with green zombie hair, police tape over their nipples, a G String and 12-inch tall platform boots. I think you can still see their influence in Jeremy Scott’s shows which were always one of my favorites at fashion week.

Then there was grunge, which Marc Jacobs picked up on and in a way carried forward and innovated for his collections. Like Kurt Cobain wearing an old lady dress and women’s sunglasses.

Hip hop culture and fashion were a big part of the early 1990s. The Tunnel was the only club in Manhattan that had a regular hip hop night. The baggy jeans and gold chains and Kangol hats were common.

There were crossdressers and people in latex S&M gear chaps and dog leashes. Basically you could show up in fetish gear – that was a fashion.

The beginnings of rave culture started to appear with the tiny backpacks, short skirts and knee-high socks. Lollipops were an accessory for those, and pig tales. I think that’s also known as “Candy girl.”

I remember Stephen Sprouse showed a grunge line at Club USA, and another time I photographed two models walking around in “Hasidic Fashion” by Jean Paul Gaultier. There was once a pop up Adidas fashion show at Limelight. All three of these are featured in the book.

How did you notice that this era was coming to a close? What in your view was New York City’s last great club?

I noticed this era coming to an end when Giuliani got elected mayor of NYC and he started enforcing the cabaret laws. Many clubs suffered because they could no longer have live music. Then he set his sights on Peter Gatien and tried to convict him of selling drugs in his clubs which was not true. There were tons of drugs being used but Peter was not dealing them. Giuliani kept closing down Peter’s clubs with false charges and this put a real damper on the club scene. Peter was never convicted of drug charges so they trumped up some tax evasion charges and deported him back to Canada. But the constant closing of clubs felt like the end.

On top of this, the hard drug use by the club kids kept escalating. Then a club kid named Angel Melendez was missing and eventually it came out that another club kid Michael Alig murdered him. Alig was in many ways the leader of the club kids so once he went to jail, being a club kid was not fab anymore. This was in 1996. Lucky for me I was transitioning out of the clubs and into my new job as staff photographer for WWD.

Although Club USA was my favorite club — it closed in 1994 — The Limelight continued on until 1998 and to me that was the last great club. And in a way it was my favorite club as well. Maybe a tie between USA and Limelight. I was always looking for the best party, and going to parties in a church was the irony of Limelight. The club designers restored and backlit the giant stained glass windows depicting biblical scenes, so it looked like sunlight was pouring through them. They were a constant reminder that we were desecrating a holy place. The musical history is insane — Pearl Jam, Fishbone, Grace Jones, Boy George, Nina Hagen, and Janes Addiction, to name a few. Then there was Limelight’s Disco 2000 with ravers dressed in outlandish drag dancing to throbbing beats and a person in a giant chicken costume as the centerpiece. The VIP room was designed by H.R. Giger, the legendary Swiss artist who created the alien for the Oscar-winning film Alien. Statues of creepy creatures were mounted on the wall and actual creepy creatures (Patrons) walked up to the bar and ordered drinks. Anything could and did happen. Still to this day it would be a novelty to party in a church.

Why did you decide to do the book now?

I had the idea for the book six years ago when a friend suggested I do a book about the club kids era. I put together a layout and showed it around but I was so busy shooting I never had time to pursue it. About two and a half years ago, the photo essay editor from Buzzfeed , Gabriel Sanchez, emailed me and wanted to do a story “the 30 craziest photos from 1990s clubland.” He saw some of my photos and wanted to interview me. During the interview I mentioned the book idea. The article was published and went viral. We decided to partner up and do this book. First we got a literary agent, JL Stermer of New Leaf Literary. She shopped for it for a year. We finally got a deal with Prestel, a division of Penguin Random House. It turns out that much like the fashion industry, the book publishing companies do trend forecasting. The 1990s were about to be trending (which they are now) and this book is all about that era. So it’s all about the right place at the right time I guess or waiting for your trend to come around LOL.

What was your favorite part about working on the book, and did this deep dive into the early 1990s change your perspective on that moment?

Most of the photographs in the book are from film, sides and negatives and are never before published. They were in storage for almost 30 years. I was busy shooting and never really had time to look back. So my favorite part of working on this book was digging into those files with Gabriel and finding the gems. The colors are bold and the subject matter compelling. Something told me that this was a unique time in history and that I should document it. This would not last forever. I really enjoyed opening a folder of slides and discovering that I did an amazing job of capturing all aspects of NYC clubland in the 1990s. My photography is about taking you along for the ride with me. In The Limelight takes the viewer into the club with me. On any given night you may see club kids prancing around, people making out, a celebrity, a drag queen dancing on a riser, a fashion show, a hip hop performance, a naked woman getting body painted, etc.

Having been shooting nightlife in NYC for 35 years doing this deep dive in my files made me realize how much nightlife changed. How significant that era was. People were more authentic. It was not about how much money you had, it was what can you add to the party. If you were fabulous or creative or fun, that was the currency. The late 1990s brought in lounges with bottle service. Buy a $300 bottle of vodka or $1,000 bottle of champagne and sit in a booth with your friends. Then came social media and everyone had a camera and everything was an instagram moment. The early 1990s was about being there being present.

Do you think this energy could ever come back to New York?

Yes! But first we need to get past the global pandemic. I think there will be a tremendous pent up demand for socializing. We are social creatures after all. I think people will be hungry for social interaction and the Peter Gatien formula of inclusive collaboration will foot the bill. People want to get sweaty and dance and feel a communal energy. Perhaps the lower real estate prices in NYC will create a vacuum that will allow artists and creatives to move in and recreate that energy and large spaces may become available for mega clubs. The Limelight space is still there and empty. Maybe someone will open the Limelight again and you will have to check your phone at the door and dress up like a club kid to get in and they will have art installations and live music and all the things that made the early 1990s so fascinating. Perhaps after Covid, people will see the value of mingling with people again and being creative and dressing as crazy as you can instead of sitting in a booth with close friends drinking a $300 bottle of vodka wearing what you think looks good on Instagram.