Beginning in Liverpool’s independent music scene in the late 1980s, Mark McNulty went on to photograph Quadrant Park, Cream and clubs across Britain, building an extensive record of how house music and nightlife changed during the 1990s.
Mark McNulty began taking photography seriously in Liverpool during the late 1980s, when the city’s band and new independent club nights gave him plenty to point a camera at. His parents had bought him a Praktica when he was fourteen, but the first real turning point came over the August bank holiday weekend of 1987, when he received an access all areas pass for the Earthbeat Festival in Sefton Park.
McNulty was also playing at Earthbeat with Eat My Dog, although the Friday afternoon performance proved to be his first and last appearance with the band. He stayed for the rest of the weekend and photographed The La’s, other musicians and people attending the festival. Looking back, he has described Earthbeat as the point where his work as a photographer properly began.
One of the first club nights he photographed was 8 Orgasms at Macmillan’s in Liverpool. Organised by Peter Coyle of The Lotus Eaters, the night combined bands and performance, with John McCready as resident DJ. McNulty had previously photographed bands at The State, but these early club nights began to turn his attention away from the stage and towards the dance floor.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
McNulty’s first published club commission came through Avant, a North West magazine edited by Stephen Kingston. Published under the strapline “What’s sorted in the North West”, it ran for nine issues during 1990 and covered music, clubs, photography, art and design. Contributors included Michael Spencer Jones, Central Station Design, Jamie Reid, Knopov and Paul Jones.
The assignment sent McNulty to Quadrant Park in Bootle. The size of the club immediately separated it from the smaller Liverpool venues he knew, with people travelling from across the North for its all night events and occupying almost every available part of the building.
As McNulty later recalled, there was no separate dance floor because the whole place had become the dance floor.
He took relatively few photographs during that first visit. There was little established club photography for him to follow, and he had no fixed idea of what the magazine expected. Instead, he concentrated on the packed room, people standing on the speakers and the hands rising above the crowd. At The State, a band had provided an obvious subject; at Quadrant Park, the dancers were the subject.
That change became fundamental to McNulty’s club photography. The pictures establish the scale of the venue through the people inside it. Faces and groups appear in the flash while the room continues behind them, often beyond the edge of the frame. Most are watching friends, dancing or finding their way through the crowd rather than waiting to be photographed.
Quadrant Park became one of Britain’s best-known all night clubs during 1990 and 1991, attracting a large travelling audience to its warehouse complex in Bootle. Its history was brief, and the club closed before the superclub business of the mid-1990s had fully developed, but its scale and reach pointed towards what followed.
Cream opened at Nation in Liverpool in October 1992. It drew on an audience and network that had already developed through The State, The Underground, warehouse parties and Quadrant Park, but it took the operation of a club night to another level. McNulty photographed both periods, allowing his work to place Cream within Liverpool’s longer house history rather than treating it as the beginning.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
After the Quadrant Park commission, McNulty sent his photographs to publications including i-D, The Face and Mixmag. The work led to assignments around Britain, placing him on the road during the period when club culture expanded into a national industry.
This is where McNulty’s archive becomes distinct. While other photographers concentrated closely on particular venues, cities or regional scenes, his work for the music press took him across Britain as clubs became larger, DJs became headline attractions and magazines played an increasingly important part in connecting audiences with particular nights.
His photographs include Universe in Bath, Pandora’s Box in Leicester, Back to Basics in Leeds, Golden in Stoke, Ministry of Sound in London, Bugged Out at Sankeys Soap in Manchester and Rezerection in Edinburgh, alongside extensive work in Liverpool. He also photographed Flesh at The Haçienda, adding another Manchester assignment to a body of work that was never confined to one city.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
By the middle of the 1990s, major clubs were operating across several rooms, advertising nationally and building recognisable identities through resident DJs, record releases, tours and events overseas. Clubbers travelled considerable distances by coach or minibuses for particular nights, while leading DJs became public figures whose names carried as much weight as the venue itself.
McNulty was commissioned by magazines to photograph that world, but his pictures rarely allow the business surrounding clubbing to overwhelm the people who attended. A recognised DJ might have secured the assignment, yet the dance floor, the size of the room and the crowd remain central.
The differences between the venues are equally important. Golden in Stoke belonged to the Midlands club circuit that developed after the earlier rave years, while Ministry of Sound represented a highly organised London club with ambitions extending into records, publishing and an international brand. Rezerection operated on the scale of a major Scottish rave, whereas Back to Basics retained a strong connection to Leeds and its regular audience.
McNulty’s photographs link these places through the national magazine circuit without suggesting they offered the same experience. The lighting, clothes, room size and relationship between dancers and DJs change from one venue to the next.
McNulty’s photographs from Full On at Cream in 1995 come from the height of the superclub period. Nation had grown far beyond the scale of a small weekly club, with several rooms, major guest DJs and visitors arriving in Liverpool from across Britain.
Cream developed through national advertising, recordings, tours, festivals and a weekly summer night at Amnesia in Ibiza, which McNulty also photographed. The club became one of Liverpool’s most successful cultural exports of the decade, but the pictures do more than confirm the size of its reputation.
Cream is essential to McNulty’s work because it shows how far British club culture had travelled within a few years. The improvised spaces and warehouse parties of the late 1980s had not disappeared, but large clubs were now working closely with national magazines, record companies, promoters and internationally recognised DJs.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Bugged Out began at Sankeys Soap in Manchester in November 1994, founded by Jockey Slut editors Paul Benney and Johnno Burgess after a series of smaller Disco Pogo parties. Its early nights concentrated on house, techno and new electronic music, with artists including The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Green Velvet and Derrick Carter appearing during its first years.
McNulty’s Bugged Out photographs belong to this first Manchester period. The venue was smaller than Nation, but the night occupied an influential position between the specialist music press, record labels and a new generation of electronic artists.
The pictures add another side to McNulty’s account of the decade. Bugged Out was professionally promoted and nationally recognised, but its identity differed from the larger superclubs. Its audience came for a particular musical programme and for artists who were still closely associated with specialist labels and clubs, even as some were beginning to reach much larger audiences.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Liverpool contained several distinct club cultures during the same period. McNulty often completed a magazine assignment at Cream before heading to Voodoo, whose harder techno programme he personally preferred.
Established in 1993, Voodoo developed a strong reputation for uncompromising bookings and a committed regular crowd. Dave Clarke was closely associated with the night, alongside DJs including Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, Laurent Garnier and Carl Cox.
McNulty’s photographs of Voodoo provide a sharp comparison with Cream. Nation offered several rooms, national advertising and the scale of a major club brand, while Voodoo was tighter, darker and more directly centred on techno. Both were part of Liverpool nightlife, and both attracted audiences who knew exactly what sort of night they were attending.
Garlands occupied another position again, with its own presentation, music and audience. McNulty’s Liverpool work is strongest when those differences remain visible rather than being grouped under a general account of 1990s clubbing.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
McNulty’s photograph of Daft Punk at The Heavenly Social in 1996 belongs naturally within this history. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo appear before the helmets became central to their public identity, at a point when they were still moving through clubs, record labels and specialist magazines.
The photograph is now recognised partly because of what Daft Punk became, but it also records a wider change in dance music. DJs and electronic artists who had once occupied specialist club bills were reaching much larger audiences, while magazines helped turn particular names into international figures.
McNulty also photographed Andrew Weatherall and worked with musicians including Portishead and Bjork. These portraits and assignments were connected to the same network as the club photographs: magazines, labels, promoters, touring schedules and venues whose influence extended well beyond their home cities.
Photo © Mark McNulty, all rights reserved.
As club photography became a regular part of Mixmag and other publications, people grew more conscious of the camera. Magazines increasingly wanted posed portraits, clothing details and recognised DJs, while clubbers understood that they might appear in print.
McNulty preferred to work among the dancers without stopping the night. He was also careful about which frames reached publication, avoiding photographs that turned an unguarded moment into a joke at somebody else’s expense.
His approach remained consistent even as the industry surrounding clubbing became larger. Quadrant Park, Cream, Bugged Out, Golden, Ministry of Sound and Voodoo differed in scale, music and ambition, but the people attending remain central to the photographs.
That national range gives McNulty’s work its particular importance. He began with Liverpool’s bands and early house nights, then travelled across Britain for the music press during the height of the superclub era. His photographs record the rise of the superstar DJ and the expanding club business without allowing the headline names to tell the whole story.
McNulty’s work is included in Tate Britain’s forthcoming The 90s: Art and Fashion, alongside photographs by other British Culture Archive photographers.
Oi Polloi, “An Interview with Mark McNulty”, 4th April 2018.
Oriel Colwyn, Mark McNulty: 35 Summers, 15th October 2022–21st January 2023.
Manchester Digital Music Archive, Avant magazine and Stephen Kingston archive records.
British Culture Archive, “British Culture Archive Photographers in Tate Britain’s The 90s: Art and Fashion”, 2026.
