giorgio-moroder-output-41

"Clubs Ban Photos, Putting Off Some Instagram & Selfie Fans"

a rare photo (of Giorgio Moroder) inside Output…
Output

When the dance club Output opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, earlier this year, its website proclaimed that the club was “open to anyone, but not for everyone.” Among those who quickly realized they were not wanted: shutterbugs put off by the club’s stringent no-photo policy. Enacted at Output to refocus attention, however compromised, on the music rather than selfie shots, the ban earned praise and condemnation in equal, if not simultaneous, measure.

“I really like the idea behind this,” one early reviewer wrote on Yelp. “But the fact that they strictly ENFORCE this,” the reviewer added, “is outrageous.” Output isn’t the only place that prohibits photography: André Saraiva’s Le Baron preserves its exclusive Gallic debauchery by not allowing photos; Amy Sacco banned cameras at her celebrity-laden Bungalow 8 in 2001 and has kept the policy intact at its near carbon copy, No. 8; and bouncers at the just-opened Sankeys actively discourage camera wielders. [NY Times]

As someone who remembers the days before digital photography and the internet, I like that some places are trying to bring back or preserve that more-private, pre-technology feel, especially places where you wouldn’t want the rest of the world to know what you did last night. It wasn’t THAT long ago that it was actually novel to see a photo from inside a club in a magazine a month after it was taken. As someone who enjoys pictures (on this website included), and kind of wishes there were more in existence from the “old days”, I also wouldn’t want to see ‘no pictures’ become the norm (not that it ever would).

In related news, check out our photos from New Year’s Eve at Baby’s All Right.