Photos from the halcyon days of 90s clubbing

Nowadays, club photography is everywhere. Every clubnight has a photographer, every raver is snapping their own pictures on their smartphone, and everyone on the dancefloor is hyper-vigilant about potential ‘slips’ being plastered across the internet without notice – so much so that worries about looking messy are commonly cited as a reason why young people seem not to be drinking or going out as much as they used to. But it wasn’t always like this.

Drawing on a massive, thousand-plus archive of photos taken at club nights in the north of England, Liverpudlian photographer Mark McNulty’s new photobook, In Clubland: 35 Summers of Love, chronicles the evolution of dancefloors over the last 35 years. And most striking of all are his shots of the 1990s, taken as dance music and ecstasy use were going mainstream, and cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds were the global hub of rave music – but crucially before smartphones had crashed the party. Through these shots of clubs like landmark Liverpool venue Cream (later spawning renowned UK festival Creamfields), readers return to a time when dancing was a little freer – when ravers’ eyes stared beyond the camera instead of directly into its lens, and when their jaws were a little looser.

McNulty’s photography journey started at age 14, capturing bands on Liverpool’s local music scene. But it wasn’t until a couple of years later, while attending an early electronic music night at Quadrant Park in the city’s Bootle neighbourhood, that he turned his attention away from the stage and towards the sweaty excesses of the dancefloor. “I became more interested in the front row of the audience than what was on stage,” he tells Dazed over video call, laughing. “I could never hear people in nightclubs, so, if I had my camera with me and the moment took me, I’d just be off taking pictures. That was my way of being part of a nightclub.”

As scenes like acid house, rave and electronic dance music took hold of British youth culture in the 90s, McNulty’s work with music magazines soon took him beyond Liverpool, photographing nights in Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle and Edinburgh. “The further north you go, the better it gets,” recalls McNulty, who’d spend most of his weekends travelling between clubs. Among the thousands of photographs in McNulty’s archive are some of dance music’s most recognisable faces, including the Chemical Brothers and an early, unmasked Daft Punk appearance at Nottingham’s Heavenly Social in the mid-90s.

But some of his favourite photographs are of people whose names he never knew. He recalls taking a picture of a woman dancing on stage at Bristol’s Lakota nightclub, framing the shot around her legs and a pair of gold boots. Years later, he posted it on Instagram and received a message from the raver herself after one of her friends had identified her by her boots and shared it with her. “People have not had photographs to look back on themselves in this period of their life, and then suddenly out of the blue this photograph of them appears,” McNulty recalls of the countless interactions he’s had with former ravers over social media. “They look back on those years as times when they had no cares, when they weren’t tied down to anything.” 

Despite its emphasis on the 90s, McNulty jokes that he’d “probably be dead” if he’d actually spent all 35 years in nightclubs. Instead, the book follows dance culture semi-chronologically through festivals, silent discos and morning raves over the 90s, 00s and 2010s, eventually culminating in the much more polished shots of Liverpool’s Eurovision celebrations in 2023, when the city hosted the contest on behalf of Ukraine.

Some shifts over these years have been for the better. Most notably, while watching a recent performance by DJ collective Girls Don’t Sync, McNulty was struck by just how much more inclusive nightlife has become in recent years. ”When I look at old [club] posters, it’s just lists and lists of fellas’ names,” he remarks. 

These days, club life is largely behind McNulty, and he now spends most of his time photographing the picturesque landscapes and community around his home in rural North Wales. But while he might have retired from the late nights, and nightlife might have become a little less chaotic than in his heyday, he maintains hope for the future of clubbing. “The scene has never gone away – there’s just a new generation leading it,” he concludes. “People are always going to go and dance, aren’t they?”

In Clubland: 35 Summers of Love is available to pre-order here