Ela Adams of Dawnswyr Tawerin, a folk dancing group from Swansea,dances in her traditional Welsh dress on the Black Mountain, Ammanford, before St David’s Day, 18 February 2024

Photograph: Joann Randles/Cover Images

Her face is covered, but you can tell it’s Ivana Trump from her beehive. The picture was taken in 1990, at a fashion show in the gilded environs of New York hotel the Plaza. She sits alone, surrounded by empty chairs, as rapacious photographers press in from behind, while hotel security guards loom from one side. A trio of well-dressed guests appear to laugh in her direction.

The photograph is one of the highlights from a new book by Dafydd Jones. New York: High Life/Low Life features images taken between 1988 and 1999, when the Wales-born society photographer moved to the US to work for titles including Vanity Fair and the New York Observer.

Prior to his move, Jones was best known for his refreshingly unvarnished party pictures of 1980s upper-crust English society (he has released two successful books on this subject – Oxford: The Last Hurrah and England: The Last Hurrah). He did much of his work at Tatler, when Tina Brown was shaking the magazine up as its new editor, and was open to society photos that took a photojournalistic approach. His style has remained constant since. One of the reasons Jones eventually left Tatler a few years after Brown did, was that a new editor “said something about smiling … And actually, around the time that I left, if you look in those copies of the magazine, every single person at a party is smiling,” he says, “which is quite limiting.”

The New York book is an evocative historical document, brimming with nostalgia and menace. Compared with today’s cyborgian beauty standards and levels of PR polish among high-profile people, the images feel refreshingly intriguing and human. Now, says Jones, high-profile people “are more sensitive – they like to control things”. At the time, the balance of power was different: “People liked being in the magazine, so they would appreciate the picture even if it wasn’t flattering.”

It is also, Jones says, quite a dark book at times, particularly when some of the images are viewed with hindsight. Many of those photographed have since died, often too young (the book includes photographs from Robert Mapplethorpe’s last days and a poignant shot of Natasha Richardson with Lauren Bacall and Paul Newman). Some of those caught pressing flesh in the pages have since fallen into disgrace (see: Jeffrey Epstein, Robert and Ghislaine Maxwell). Donald Trump is a frequent presence; Jones says Trump struck him as “gangsterish”, even then. The first time he photographed him, “he had a bodyguard at a funeral – which was sort of strange. Lots of other kind of famous people didn’t have bodyguards. It was a bit mob-like, really.”

Trump’s presence certainly haunts that Ivana picture, which was taken in a hotel he then owned, in the middle of their messy divorce – hence all of the photographers scrabbling towards her. “For a moment, it was too much for her,” says Jones, “though 20 seconds later, she was smiling for the cameras.”

New York: High Life/Low Life by Dafydd Jones is published by ACC Art Books.

Socialite worker: six highlights from Jones’ New York photographs

Dachshunds fighting over doggy canapes, Barbetta restaurant, 1990 (main picture)
When he worked for Tatler, Jones became well known for a 1982 picture of a suited Hooray Henry pushing a debutante into a pond. This 1990 image, he says, in which a pair of dogs squirm wildly, desperate to eat the bone-shaped canapes, felt like his New York equivalent.

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Ivana Trump, Fashion Group couture show, the Plaza Hotel, 1990
Vanity Fair ran this picture on almost a full page. It was taken using a camera that was new to Jones at the time, which took square-shaped pictures – enabling the chaos surrounding Ivana to be seen from all sides. One of the photographers approaching her, in the back of the photo, is legendary photographer Bill Cunningham.

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Front row applauding Carolyne Roehm’s spring collection, 1989
“I call that The Horrors,” says Jones of this fashion show front row. “It managed to look quite scary.” At the time Upper East Side ladies who lunched, such as Nan Kempner, and sometimes their “walkers” (men who accompanied rich women to events; Jerry Zipkin played this role for Nancy Reagan), dominated fashion events in New York. It felt “very old-fashioned,” he says – and this was the beginning of the end. Soon, fashion editors and celebrities would take their place.

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Martha Reed with champagne twizzle stick, Spanish Gold Medal Gala, November 1989
New York society life could be sad: Jones frequently saw rich society women like Martha Reed alone at parties. Her personal life was rife with dark rumours about domestic abuse. She was lonely – and she was no anomaly: “I noticed more people sitting on their own and looking quite sad. It was tougher.”

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Maria Paterno Castello di San Giuliano, Princess Asaea Beatrice Reyna di Savoia, Miss Hikari Ohta and the maid in the ladies powder room, International Debutante Ball, 1993
“I liked that the maid was in here as well,” says Jones. “You don’t expect to see debutantes like this in New York – or I didn’t.” Actually, he says, New York society was more snobbish, and stratified, than England, in its way, in the division between uptown and downtown, and old and new money.

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Launch of Tina Brown’s Talk magazine, 1999
This was taken on a boat ferrying guests to Liberty Island for what Jones describes as “the biggest magazine launch I’ve been to”. The catering was lavish, the guest list was star-studded; the event has since been described as the end of an era of media decadence. The magazine did not survive the rise of the internet.

«You can tell a lot about a place by talking about its food,» says Tim Mackintosh-Smith, a historian, traveler, and interpreter closely connected to the Arab world, when asked about the release of Bittersweet – A Story of Food and Yemen. This book, authored by Sayed Asif Mahmud and produced by the UN World Food Programme, explores the culture (especially the culinary culture) of Yemen. Through both black-and-white and color photographs, the book examines how food, specifically, is intertwined with Yemeni culture: from daily life to cooking and means of subsistence.

Sayed Asif Mahmud Tells the Story of Yemen

Sayed Asif Mahmud, originally from Bangladesh, has been working with the United Nations World Food Programme since 2019, while Marta Colburn and Jessica Olney have composed the critical text. The two authors have meticulously researched many of the practices, from those used by Yemeni fishermen to maximize their catch to the reason why honey is an integral part of Yemen’s national and spiritual identity.

Agriculture, trade, and identity are thus at the heart of this book, which also narrates the unique characteristics of this country from a landscape and architectural perspective. «This book is about tastes and smells, ingredients and dishes, culinary geographies and stories (past, present, future) of the country,» says Tim Mackintosh-Smith.

When you were ten years old, your mom signed you up for photography classes. When did it click for you that you wanted to be a photographer?

Watching the pictures appear in the dark room was really crazy, but I became especially mind blown when I saw photography I really liked. The first time I saw Richard Avadon’s work, David Sims, the first old issue of Dazed I held—I remember looking at those and being like, what the hell. I always liked aesthetics–how clothes looked–and then the ability to create characters. I loved movies. So movies, Avadon, [David] Sims, Jeurgen [Teller] and the works I saw in 2000’s issues of Dazed created an intersection that made me pursue the medium of photography.

I was passionate about music, too, maybe even a little bit more into music than photography around fourteen, fifteen, but I didn’t meet anyone who was a rockstar or successful musician. I got very lucky when my mom happened to meet a really successful photographer. I didn’t choose photography just because I could make money at it, but this was the first example of someone making a living out of one of the things that I loved, at a time when I was really stressed about making a living because my family didn’t have a lot, and I was like, I don’t want to do this again.

The people in my immediate environment were like, “You know how many people want to be a rockstar?” all the time. And I understand where that comes from if you’re talking to a kid and you’re trying not to give them delusional ideas. So I don’t resent them, I guess I kind of see it as fate guiding me towards photography and I feel really fortunate. I’m still so in love with photography after all this time.

How does your passion for music influence and inspire your photography?

I’m really instinctual. So I sometimes have a difficult time understanding where inspirations begin and end. I think there is an inherent overlap in what I’m interested in–music, skateboarding, fashion, film—and they’re all bridges that allow me to express myself and connect with people who might not necessarily be interested in fashion, for example, but find an access point to it through music, or vice versa.

You support yourself with your art, which is something a lot of artists aspire to. Can you tell me the best and worst part about it?

The best part–when things are going really well–is freedom. When I was more in the developmental stage, a lot of the process felt like building confidence in my instincts. And when it’s working for long enough, suddenly it flips and your instincts become the constant that you rely on most. So that’s really liberating. I finally got over the imposter syndrome of “Can I do this?” Now, the best thing is to move forward with a few trusted collaborators and have faith. You’re basically trusting yourself for a living, which is pretty exciting. But on the flipside, a lot of the time, what I’m doing is still a job, and so I’m constantly having to negotiate. I really care about my work, and sometimes there are such big teams at play that it’s tough to hold on to the vision.

Do you have a tough time switching hats from business to artist?

Yeah, yeah. I basically have removed myself completely from business. It really gets in the way for me of the creative stuff. I used to try to do friends’ brands projects myself because I knew they might be offended if I sent them to my agent. But I realized I can’t do it [that way], I find the creative process too personal, and I want to do my best to the full amount each time so I need someone in between to basically create options for the person who’s commissioning me so that the project is clear. If they’re not presented with options, I’m just gonna go all the way every time and issues might arise from that disconnect. I need that person to mediate, and having older friends in similar positions has helped normalize it for me. Once we get to work after that, it’s always the best.

What would you tell artists early in their career about learning to say yes and no?

I know it came off as arrogance or delusion to my mom. I would tell her when I would say no to things early on, and she’d be like, “You have no business saying no…” I was really, really broke. But I always had a sense of what I was interested in. I knew that if I took on something that I didn’t resonate with or think was actually good, then it wouldn’t turn out, and it would be out there in the world with my name on it.

It might hurt more in the long run than benefit in the short run?

Totally. I was already dealing with trying to make it in Montreal when I didn’t really speak French very well–that was already a hurdle that slowed my trajectory—and I was being really picky about what I was doing, so it definitely made things take longer. But I think, in the long run, it was probably worth it because even if it may have felt slow, I think what an artist does and puts out into the world is important.

To be clear, I definitely took a lot of paid work that didn’t necessarily speak to me, but I compartmentalized those projects as less my own expression, and more of a technical exercise which also funded my life. I would pick projects I knew wouldn’t be super public facing for me. So, if it was something I knew would involve my own creative expression, I would be especially selective. And then if there was a big institution that just needed me to be a cog in it, then I would do less inspiring jobs. Protect your artistic integrity, but most people have to earn a living, so sometimes we make concessions. Ultimately I’m very grateful for even those less fun jobs because without them I wouldn’t be here now.

You’re predominantly a fashion photographer, but would you enjoy doing more personal projects again like your book, WAYN?

I do want to make more books. I’m working on one now, actually. Making WAYN was a really cool process. I like it when an artist builds a world or an experience–whether it’s a collection, a film, a party, a book. I love going into people’s worlds for a set amount of time. So it was really fun to create an experience–as abstract as it might have been–it was fun to provide something that was exactly, specifically how I wanted, and then to release that into the world and let people interpret it in their own way.

We both grew up in Canada, with the American Dream within reach. Moving from Vancouver to Montreal to New York, have you had to adjust your expectations and dreams, or have those stayed consistent throughout?

When I was young, in high school, I had these grandiose things I wanted. I remember thinking, going to a wealthier friend’s house with a big pool and fancy cars, I was like, “oh, I want that: the pool, the house, the Ferrari.” As I began to own things I always wanted, I would say I’ve definitely adjusted what I value and will provide a happy life. I have a lifestyle in mind that is definitely comfortable, I still have expensive taste, but I don’t want a Ferrari. [laughs]

Getting to New York has been both humbling and revitalizing at the same time. I’m into manifesting and putting dreams out there, but I don’t do it in a three year plan, five years, etc. It’s more just dreams, and more specific to people I would love to work with rather than the time in which it needs to happen.

When things would get stressful, and tight, and difficult, I would become paralyzed and anxious and start spiraling. I’d worry that things wouldn’t be ok. With time and experience, when there’s stillness and there’s nothing coming at me, that’s the time to be grateful and shoot personal work, and to reach out to people I’m inspired by who I want to work with.

What’s your relationship with failure?

I used to be so worried about not getting a job or a response, I really took it personally. It’s just been a practice of changing my perspective on it. What helps is the busier you become, you realize how not personal everything is. There can be a variety of reasons another person is chosen for a job, and I’ve forgotten to respond to emails from people I didn’t dislike at all. Once you realize that–that they might have wanted to reach out but got pulled away–it’s freeing. I’ve gotten messages back five months later from people who got caught up and forgot to reply.

Failure wise, my nightmare would be not understanding what someone wanted and not delivering work we both loved. Some people might be easier to work with than me in terms of going with the flow, but [through learning from miscommunications,] I’ve become very particular about making sure we know what we’re doing: I ask a lot of questions before the shoot so that all the collaborators are, as much as possible, in alignment on the desired outcome of the project.

You were doing really well in Montreal. What pushed you to take this leap to New York?

I deeply appreciate Vancouver and Montreal for being my homes. Many people in Montreal embraced me, and I really grew into my own there. I miss a lot of people, and they’re both important to me. But I’ve always wanted to create the best work possible–the access to clothes, talent, and collaborators in New York, Paris, and London was always a dream. I was planning to move before COVID and it just didn’t happen. It was a mix of luck, instinct, and fate. The pandemic gave me two more years to keep working really hard in Montreal and do the best I could. And now that I’ve gotten here, even though I’m essentially starting over, I think a lot of those projects that I did the last while are the reason I’m getting a lot of the meetings. I am very grateful.

I’m glad you mentioned luck and timing, because your ethos about being in the present and focusing on your art and what you can do moment to moment is so important in times when something like COVID happens that is very destabilizing. If you’d set hard deadlines to move for example, it could have felt like an unmanageable blow.

As an artist, so much of what makes you good is adapting and evolving. Take a piece of bad news, process it, let it pass, and then pivot.

How do you deal with fear or resistance coming up in your practice?

Fear always happens before something is in front of me. Anxiety is fear of the unknown but when you’re present–I’ve noticed it with athletes. They’re one person outside, but on the field, they are in the zone. For me, once we’re on set, beyond the beginning jitters, I lock in.

I deal with fear by preparing. That’s the only way. Feedback I get from collaborators afterwards is they appreciate how thorough we are. We really cover everything about what could happen in the day, we try to know every answer and then once we have that plan, we’re ready to adapt or throw it away when people have–often great–ideas in the moment. Everyone has a different process and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. For me, the more we prepare, the freer we can be on the day because we really understand where we’re going. I do all the preparation so that I can feel as free as I can when we’re working.

Do you have a piece of advice that you received that sticks out for you? Has a piece of advice stuck out to you in your career, one that you received or one you would give to aspiring photographers?

I know for a fact that people are better at interpreting advice than me because they did a lot better than me at school [laughs].

When I was 16 I wrote a message to [the photographer] Josh Olins and he replied. That meant a lot to me. I’ll paraphrase, but some of the advice I remember being helpful was: it could be a good idea to assist photographers you respect. It’s a good way to learn the technical side, and ultimately a way to meet established industry people who’s assistants will likely become the people you end up working with. He suggested learning about clothing/fashion, and encouraged me to try making something simple but strong, as opposed to aiming for something really complex right away. His final advice was to simply take a lot of photos, all the time.

I’m also obsessed with interviews with artists I like. I love learning about people’s experiences. I think I learn more through examples of humans being alive and how they’ve operated and grown and evolved over long periods of time, so that’s my go to.

I’ve learned that not zooming out too far is really important. In any of these paths, when you try to see the whole picture and examine what you do in the context of everything from far away, with preconceived notions about it, it can be paralyzing.

Sometimes, the best way to proceed is just to write down a couple things you think would be interesting to explore and then just start doing it. Whether that’s helping at a junior level in a field you want to work in, or doing a simpler version of something bigger that you want to do. And early on try not to be too precious. I think we really develop through playing. There are very few examples of highly successful people who knew all along exactly how they were going to get there–unless they were dealing with a unique level of nepotism.

Also, comparing is really bad. Just stick to your gut and what you actually care about, that’s my advice.

So how does it feel to have made the move to New York?

I’ve never been so inspired. I love this city, and it means a lot how welcoming people have been. Not to get it twisted though: there is a lot of pressure, and I have a lot to prove to myself, and a lot of room to grow and develop. But I’m really excited. About all of it.

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A London photographer has found fame and fulfilment by swapping celebrities for ordinary people.

After years photographing the likes of Tina Turner and Madonna, Duncan Raban started a popular Facebook page called Just Say Hello which celebrates the extraordinary in every day people.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – It’s been nearly six months since Rayyan Behi married the love of her life in New Orleans, but the newlywed has yet to see the professional photos she was promised and paid for.

Behi only has cell phone photos, videos, and selfies from her special day to look back on. Her most prized clip is a four-second video of her dancing with her brother Mohsin. It is one of the last images of her brother before he tragically died a few weeks after her wedding.

“I could care less about the money. I want the memories. That’s all that really matters to me,” Behi said.

She has been in a months-long waiting game with the photography company she hired and the freelancer photographer that was sent to take photos of her wedding, including images of Mohsin.

“We were very much alike. (Mohsin) always referred to me as his mini-me, his twin. And so after he passed and knowing I might never get these pictures, it genuinely hurts me,” Behi said.

In Spring 2023, Behi was going through the wedding planning process online while adjusting to New Orleans after moving from her home in Oklahoma. She says she used a smartphone app designed to help couples easily plan their special day with companies and freelancers in the area.

They settled on Positively Photo & Video out of Hammond due to the positive reviews, sample work, and a $200 discount that owner Arief Harlan was offering at the time.

But on November 26, the day of Behi’s wedding, it wasn’t Harlan who showed up to take pictures.

“The contract is between me and the photographer. I am under the impression that Arief is the photographer that is coming to take our pictures. So the day of the wedding, I’m getting ready and this girl named Jaselin shows up,” Behi said.

Jaselin Bonilla arrived at Behi’s wedding and reception to take photos, which the bride said was not told to her in advance.

“We hired (Bonilla) as a contract shooter to cover a wedding and she attended and shot it. However, she has not returned any of the photos that are due according to the contract she signed with us,” Harland said.

Fox 8 spoke to Harlan over the phone. He did not want to do an in-person interview with Fox 8 or share the contract that he says he signed with Bonilla before paying her to shoot Behi’s wedding.

From Bonilla’s Instagram page, her bio says she is a Houston fashion and brand photographer and her Facebook profile says she is from LaPlace.

Harlan says he found Bonilla on a freelance photography Facebook group and thought she would be a good fit to shoot Behi’s wedding. Harlan says Bonilla was supposed to send him the photos she shot, he would edit them and then Harlan would give them to Behi.

But when Behi’s brother suddenly passed away, Behi asked for her $800 wedding photos to be ready in time for her brother’s funeral.

“I texted (Harlan) and I let him know, ‘Hey my brother passed away. I would really like to see those photos of my brother.’ I even sent him photos of what he looked like,” Behi said.

Harland managed to get three unedited photos from Bonilla that had Behi, her brother, and another family member in them. Behi says the photos did not line up to what she was contractually promised and paid for.

“I was supposed to have five hours of coverage and I received three photos that looked like duplicate photos,” she said. “This doesn’t look like quality work from someone who would have gotten a thousand dollars worth for taking photos.”

Harlan says he texted Bonilla multiple times for more photos of Behi’s wedding, especially of photos with her brother, but his messages went unanswered.

“I thought it was all going to be ok but then for some reason she wasn’t going to send the rest. I’m not sure. It kind of all went downhill,” Harlan said. “She gave excuses about getting it in or traveling and stuff and all of the sudden it seems like her phone got disconnected and we haven’t been in touch since.”

Eventually, Harlan texted Bonilla, asking her for a $175 partial refund since she wasn’t following through with the photos. He also threatened to take her to small collections court if she didn’t fulfill the contract.

Ultimately, he told Behi his hands were tied after he received no responses from Bonilla.

“(Harlan) said he has been having problems getting it from Jaselin and I should reach out to her and see if I could get it from her,” Behi said.

Behi says once she had Bonilla’s full name and contact information, she went searching for her on Facebook, where she found multiple complaints from people who said Bonilla did not produce photos for them.

She questions why Harlan hired Bonilla in the first place.

“It all looked good to go but then after her being hired is when issues among other groups started arising,” Harlan said.

Even though her social media pages say Bonilla is from LaPlace and based in Houston, she is a member of several photography groups for various cities like Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, Houston, and Hawaii.

In the group called, “Photographers & Models Wanted Hawaii,” Bonilla posted that she would be holding two days of photo shoots in Honolulu for $50 advanced payments. Those photo shoots were supposed to be just five days before Bonilla had to be in New Orleans for Behi’s wedding.

One Hawaiian model, who wants to remain anonymous, says she reached out to Bonilla about the shoots, eager about the low cost.

“Her profile basically said, ‘Oh I’m a Christian woman. I believe in helping other women, lifting other women up,’ and that made me trust her,” the model said.

The model paid Bonilla the $50 on November 14 but on November 19, the day before the Honolulu shoot, Bonilla messaged the model saying she never took a flight to Hawaii.

“It’s less than 14 hours before the shoot, she should definitely be here because she’s flying from New York, and then she tells me she got sick and wasn’t able to fly to Honolulu,” the model said.

Bonilla then said she would return to Hawaii in December if the model was still interested in a photo session. While she waited, the model asked for a refund from Bonilla but over four days, Bonilla told the model multiple times that she had issues with her bank that prevented any transactions.

The model made an anonymous post on the Facebook group saying in part, “What do I do if the photographer cancels last minute and is semi-ghosting me since I asked for my money back?”

“When I posted about her anonymously, people were like, ‘Oh this is that girl from New Orleans?’” the model said.

The model says multiple people commented and messaged her, sharing their own negative experiences with Bonilla. Eventually, Laura Dulgerian, a New York jewelry store owner, reached out to her with her issues with Bonilla.

“You win some. You lose some. I just know I’m never going to use her again,” Dulgerian said.

Dulgerian says Bonilla reached out to Humble and Spark, her store on Etsy, on July 5. She wanted to see if Dulgerian was interested in a photo shoot for some of her pieces.

The pair agreed on Bonilla’s silver package for $500, but with some modifications: only one model and 10 pieces of Dulgerian’s jewelry.

Dulgerian says she fast-tracked the jewelry to Bonilla’s Houston address overnight. She says Bonilla wanted to fly to Miami the next day and meet with a model for the photoshoot.

“(The photos) weren’t great. A lot of them weren’t edited. They weren’t my brand. I sent her my brand packet which is basically the color scheme I work with. None of them matched my brand colors,” she said.

Dulgerian says it took two months for Bonilla to send back around 60 photos from the photoshoot, but she says trying to get her jewelry back from Bonilla was the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal.

For months, Bonilla says there were issues shipping back Dulgerian’s merchandise or that she was too busy traveling to ship them in a timely manner.

“And then I did get merchandise back but I only got half of it. She didn’t send all the pieces back. Maybe total it would’ve been maybe a few hundred dollars,” Dulgerian said.

Now, almost a year after the photo shoot, Dulgerian says she has given up trying to get her missing pieces back.

“That’s long gone. That’s long gone,” she said. “If you jip everyone out of 200, 300 dollars that adds up.”

Dulgerian and others who say have had issues with Bonilla want to warn others of their experiences.

“The fact that she is doing this so much to other people that is just such a disappointment,” Dulgerian said.

Behi says mourning the loss of her brother is that much more painful knowing that she might never get her wedding photos from Bonilla.

“It just hurts. If you took the pictures and you have them, why hold them hostage? Why can’t you just hand them over to me unless you didn’t take them at all,” Behi said.

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