“No” Elizabeth Avedon answered abruptly when I asked her to write an article about Antonio Lopez’s upcoming book by Twin Palms publishers. “Why?” I asked, taken aback. Because the book, as sublime as it may be, is pain, a lifestyle that has disappeared, deaths that are still painful. The comment was so true. The book covers 15 unique years in our history, 1969-1984. Those when sexual freedom, hetero or homosexual, was born.I knew Antonio Lopez well, and his accomplice and soul brother Juan, too. Antonio was flamboyant, charismatic, extremely talented and creative, ahead of the times, provocative, seductive, a surprising Pygmalion (he discovered Jessica Lang and Jerry Hall in Paris, they were 17-year-old Texan students). His apartment in Saint-Germain, as well as his studio-loft in New York, hosted some of the most fabulous parties. All of the women were sublime, the men seductive. Endless parties, heterogeneous encounters, boundless provocation, Antonio recorded all of those staged settings. In the early 1980’s, the apocalypse hit and it was called AIDS. We forget how much the creativity of this period was destroyed. The imagination, the craziness, the dreams, disappeared a little bit more each week with every new burial. These pictures remain. We survived. It was the end of innocence.

Jean-Jacques Naudet

Instamatics
Antonio Lopez
Twin Palms, 2011

11 x 14 Inches
85 Four-color Plates
160 Pages
First Edition
Casebound
$75.00
ISBN: 978-1-931885-94-2