Flesh at The Haçienda, 1990s: Photographs by Jon Shard

Published 23rd September 2021

On the last Wednesday of the month, Flesh brought gay and lesbian clubbers from across Britain to The Haçienda. Jon Shard photographed the DJs, performers and people who had spent weeks deciding what to wear.

“People came from London, people came from Scotland, you even had people from Europe coming over,” Shard recalls. “Imagine coming over from Europe for a night out on a Wednesday. It was one of the most important nights there. It was probably the biggest gay night in Europe.”

A gay night at The Haçienda

Flesh began in October 1991, founded by The Haçienda’s entertainment and promotions manager Paul Cons and promoter Lucy Scher. Scher had already organised a lesbian event at the club. Together, they built on an existing scene that included the Number One club, and gave it the space and sound system of The Haçienda.

The early nineties was still a time of both hostility and organised resistance. In February 1988, tens of thousands of people had marched through Manchester against the proposed Section 28. The legislation introduced that year restricted local authorities’ support for gay and lesbian life. Police harassment and the AIDS crisis also shaped the circumstances in which these clubs operated.

Manchester’s queer nightlife was becoming more publicly visible. Manto opened on Canal Street in 1990 with large windows that allowed passers by to see into the bar. Flesh brought a gay and lesbian audience into one of the city’s best known music venues, with its own DJs, door policy and publicity.

Posters used slogans including “Queer as Fuck”, “Practice Makes Pervert” and “It’s Queer Up North”. Tickets carried the line “Management reserve the right to refuse admission to known heterosexuals”. Straight clubbers attended, but the night’s gay and lesbian audience set the terms.

Photo © Jon Shard / British Culture Archive

DJs and performance

Flesh’s resident DJs included Tim Lennox, Dave Kendrick, Michelle Mangan, DJ Paulette and Kath McDermott. House and disco were central to the music, while Scher made women’s involvement a priority in both the programme and its publicity.

Fashion shows, drag performances and themed events ran alongside the DJ sets. Miss Flesh, an alternative beauty pageant, became a regular fixture. Shard photographed the performers as well as the clubbers watching and dancing around them.

Photo © Jon Shard / British Culture Archive

Jon Shard at Flesh

Shard began photographing the club shortly after leaving college. He wanted to work for music magazines, but initially took pictures for himself. Those photographs became a portfolio that helped him secure commissions from publications including Mixmag.

“I started working Flesh through my work with Peter J. Walsh. He got me into the Haç,” Shard remembers. “My friends and the people around me would talk about it all month. It was always packed and full of energy.”

DJ Kath McDermott remembers his enthusiasm: “Jon was keen as mustard. He came over and explained why we should let him take some pictures at Flesh. He was even younger than me, and absolutely slayed it. An absolute darling.”

His working relationship with Cons meant he knew which performances and events were planned. He also remembers Flesh as a more welcoming night than the club’s increasingly troubled Friday and Saturday nights in 1993 and 1994.

Photo © Jon Shard / British Culture Archive

Fashion at Flesh

The effort people put into dressing for Flesh gave Shard plenty to photograph.

“It was the best night to shoot due to the carnival atmosphere,” he says. “It was very colourful, and everyone spent two or three days deciding what to wear. I always brought a lot of film, knowing I would get some amazing images.”

Sportswear, leather, drag and elaborate costumes appear throughout the series. One portrait, of a clubber wearing a headdress fashioned from silver wire, prompted a particular recollection:

“The guy in the photo had created this incredible headdress from silver wire, combined with the long chain around his neck. He was moving around the club almost like a piece of performance art.

“Flesh had a very different feel from the regular Haçienda nights. It was a gay night that had its own look and energy, with people experimenting much more with fashion and how they presented themselves. Fashion was central to the night but it wasn’t necessarily about following fashion. People were creating their own looks.

“Looking back, I think this was what made the 90s so interesting. Fashion, music, art and nightlife all seemed to overlap. People were creating things for themselves rather than for an audience online.”

Photo © Jon Shard, art direction Craig Johnson.

Photographing the light

Shard wanted to show the scale of The Haçienda as well as the people in it. For views of the main floor, he photographed from a distance, using longer exposures to catch the lighting as it spread across the crowd. Ben Kelly’s interior, with its black-and-yellow columns and elevated DJ booth, remained part of the pictures.

In a 2019 interview, Shard chose a view of the crowd under blue light as his favourite Haçienda photograph — the colour he associated most strongly with the club. Another shows DJ Paulette at work in the Gay Traitor, the basement bar. “The green lighting really gives it that basement club feel,” he says.

Shard also exhibited his Flesh photographs in the Gay Traitor during the night itself, showing the work in the club where he had taken it.

The surviving archive

Shard no longer has all the photographs he took at The Haçienda. He sent original slides to magazines and many were never returned. He believes thousands of images may now be lost; the surviving photographs represent only part of his work at the club.

Flesh’s final event is documented as the 30th October 1996. The Haçienda closed the following year.

British Culture Archive and Tate Britain

British Culture Archive has published and exhibited Shard’s Flesh photographs, including a selection in Together As One: A Celebration of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ Community. The exhibition also featured Peter J Walsh’s photographs of Manchester’s 1988 anti-Clause 28 demonstration.

Selected photographs from Shard’s Flesh series will feature in The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain, running from 8th October 2026 to 14th February 2027.