(not only) black+white magazine | BLUE
February Issue 2003 – Interview by Sasha

IF YOU'VE BEEN to any Mardi Gras parade, Sleaze Ball, Pride party, DIVAs, drag show, or nightclub event in Sydney in the last 15 years, you will have seen her, probably even posed for her. Small figure engulfed by a flowing purple outfit, alabaster face painted with thick theatrical makeup, purple hair flying, camera poised - such is the public guise of Mazz Image, the photographer who has become a veritable legend on the pink party circuit.

To coincide with the 25th anniversary of Mardi Gras, Mazz has excavated her exhaustive archive and is releasing a book showcasing the fruits of her labour over the past decade and a half. Released in a limited edition of 2000 copies,
You & Mardi Gras | images by MAZZ is the culmination of hundreds of nights spent squeezing through surging crowds of sweaty semi-naked bodies to document the gay and lesbian scene from the inside and thereby captures the rapturous moments which define Sydney's queer history.

"If I could pinpoint a place where it all started, it would be in the basement dressing room of the Albury Hotel in the late 1980s when I began photographing all the drag queens as they prepared for their shows," she reminisces, her kohl-rimmed eyes gazing out the window of the Oxford St café we're sitting in. "I was fresh to the scene and an undergraduate student at University of NSW - College of Fine Arts [COFA]. Those years were the peak of the party era and I was going to dance parties and shows in an unofficial capacity almost every weekend. It's all a blur now, but at some stage I just replaced dancing with photographing and everything evolved from there."

Such a visual extravaganza might have overwhelmed any other young girl from the relative peace of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, but long before she hit the city, Mazz was already a "creative individual" with an inexplicable passion for purple. "From the Mountains, Sydney was like a sparkling tiara on the horizon so I decided I wanted to go there," she recalls. And though being around all those glamorous queer performers and drag queens did influence her style, she is adamant that her look has been a creative evolution. "I already had a history of creative makeup and dressing up years before I moved to Taylor Square," she scoffs. "As for purple, it started about 20 years ago as a preference for the colour and developed into an obsession which has become a natural part of my daily life."

The book - which of course has a purple cover - is not a mere chronology of the Mardi Gras festivals over the years Mazz has documented them. It is broken into themed chapters - Boys, Girls, Drag, Leather Fetish, Shows, Events, Community - each introduced by a writer in the community [Jonathan Turner, Miranda Fair, Lance Leopard, Nell Scofeild, Verushka Darling, Neil Purcell, Stephen Dunn, Andy Quan and Graham Carbery]. And though its pages contain somewhere over 350 photos, this doesn't even touch the sides of Mazz's archive, which she estimates consists of over a million negatives. "Some photos were chosen because they are stunning, beautiful photos and some because they are of wonderful, gorgeous people," she explains. "A broad cross-section of the community is represented, not just the beautiful people who get photographed all the time on Oxford St."

Mazz empties a well travelled envelope onto the table and a pile of photographs spill out haphazardly. "I've just been sorting through thousands of images, and my brain feels like jelly," she sighs, shuffling through a handful. "I have enough to fill more than a hundred books ... This one of Kylie Minogue and William Yang is taken at the opening of the Robert Mapplethorpe Retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and absolutely exemplifies what I love about photography - capturing a moment within the context of people enjoying an event. Likewise with the picture of Candy eating a hot sausage at Sleaze Ball - that was one of those moments you just can't pass by!"

Incidentally, the release of her book is not the only thing Mazz is celebrating of late. Despite all these years in the thick of the gay and lesbian scene, she has recently become engaged - to a man! - and is due to be married the weekend after Mardi Gras. "It has come as a bit of a shock to some people at first, including myself," she laughs, "but mostly my friends and associates have been really supportive, they all appreciate how special this is - committing to share your life with someone. The community has always provided an environment to freely express all the diverse facets of who you are. We've really fought hard for acceptance to love and to be loved by whom we wish and that is real magic.