For once it was paparazzo Ron Gallela who was in the line of fire. As the celebrity photographer — once issued a restraining order preventing him from getting near Jackie O — walked into SoHo's Sorokko Gallery in New York last week for the opening of "The Last Party: Nightworld in Photographs," he was blinded by strobe lights.
The exhibition — photographs documenting 100 years of nightlife around the world — includes pictures by everyone from Brassaï to Diane Arbus to Gallela. Its main focus, however, is on the Seventies disco craze, and it comes just in time to commemorate this month's 20th anniversary of the opening of Studio 54.
Swarms of fashionables, most much too young to have discoed their way through the Me Decade, pushed and shoved into the trilevel space, making the exhibit almost impossible to see.
Gloria Gaynor made a very Seventies arrival, popping out of a white stretch limo in an outfit glittery with sequins and beads.
Later that night at Cheetah, a new club in the Flatiron district, celebrants looked to recreate the Studio days. The nostalgia reached a peak when Gaynor's timeless hit, "I Will Survive," blared as Anthony Haden-Guest, having stripped his shirt and tie to a white undershirt, led the pack on the dance floor. Guest's new book, "The Last Party," chronicles the days and nights of Studio 54.