Frank Rispoli: High Heels

As a young man, living in Manhattan in the 1970s and ‘80s, Frank Rispoli was drawn to the New Wave and Punk club scenes. Recognizing the inherent performance of sexuality and desire in both fashion and club culture, he documented the intertwining of the two. Always with a camera strapped around his neck, he frequented Danceteria, Tier 3, Max’s Kansas City, Studio 54 and many other clubs in Soho, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, and Midtown. Rispoli asked female clubgoers, bar patrons, singers, and band members if he could photograph their shoes, utilizing the staged sets, props, and bathrooms of the clubs, and the taxis, sidewalks, and rooftops of the city, as his backdrops. A selection of these photographs forms the basis of his first book – High Heels.

Rispoli attributes his interest in women’s shoes to his inability, as a teenager, to look women in the eye and, due to his shyness, focusing on their feet instead. He drew further inspiration from the work of Guy Bourdin, and his advertising photography of the period. Rispoli continues, in his photographs, to capture the fun, freedom, and performance found in other outsider communities and events, such as Wigstock, and the burgeoning art scene in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Erick Bradshaw Hughes is a writer and musician living in New York City. He hosts Spin Age Blasters on WFMU.