Earlier this year, the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project kicked off research for its latest book project: "Forever Young: Celebrating Wisconsin’s 21-Below Clubs of the 80s and 90s."
Since January, we’ve interviewed nearly 80 Gen Xrs, all of whom shared loving and reverent memories of their days at places like Bailey’s, Club Marilyn, Attic West, Park Avenue, and Esoteria.
There was just one problem. While Gen X kids could (and would) go out five nights a week, they didn’t usually bring cameras with them. Being the last generation before the internet also meant living in undocumented times. On the rare occasion someone did bring a camera to the club, for a birthday party, a going-away party, or another special event, those were not exactly the high-quality cameras favored by book publishers. The cameras of the late '80s and early '90s – whether they be disc, disposable or Polaroid – didn’t exactly take photos meant to last decades.
Sourcing 100 photos for this project soon seemed impossible. So, imagine my delight to be introduced to creative pro Stanley Ryan Jones, who shared a collection of 70+ high-resolution, beautifully shot photos with the Forever Young Project. And imagine my amazement, as a long-time Milwaukeean, to learn that these photos were rescued from the ashes of the Norman Apartments Fire of Jan. 12, 1991, only to appear in our book 34 years later.
I had the opportunity to chat with Stan about his life, his work, and his memories of nightlife then and now. Here’s his story.
Stan grew up in Mayville, Wisconsin (population: <4,000) in the 1960s. He’s a third or fourth cousin of Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank’s sister Maginel Wright Barney wrote a book, The Valley of the God Almighty Joneses, and Stan is proud to be one of those God Almighty Joneses.
“It sort of explains a lot about my father,” he laughs. “I inherited Frank’s genius and his jowls.”
Stan was president of his high school photography club – “probably my only activity,” he laughed – which ignited his passion for photos at an early age.
“Being born in the 1950s is a very strange thing,” said Stan, “to have memories of what America was like in the 1950s compared to what came later.”
The anti-war movement was exploding while he was still in high school. In fact, he almost attended the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, which became a counterculture milestone in history.
After high school, he went into the army and was stationed in Germany during the Vietnam War era.
“I was punk before punk,” said Stan. “I was a punk as a teenager in the juvenile delinquent sense. Getting in trouble, getting into fights, you name it. So, I went into the army as a punk, and came out even worse, if you can imagine that.”
“Back then, everyone who was anyone was going to San Francisco. But the army was the direct opposite of San Francisco,” he laughed.
“That was a very strange time for the U.S. military,” said Stan. “Morale was lower than it’d been since the Civil War due to the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. It was a strange, strange environment to find myself in, and I’d imagine it would be hardly recognizable to today’s military. But I pursued photography while I was enlisted, more of a National Geographic style than my later work, to keep myself busy.”
After the army, Stan returned to Mayville, and lived in a hippie commune in Theresa, Wisconsin for a while.
“It was hardly a real commune, but it was a bunch of people living together in the country, with dogs, a horse, a garden, trucks, overalls, you know – a real back to the country thing. All the hippies were moving from San Francisco to the countryside. So, the '60s I was actually involved with, was kind of this small-town sidelines thing, you know?”
After a few years, Stan gravitated to Milwaukee where he enrolled in the Milwaukee Area Technical College photography program. It was a time of great musical transition, as the New York Dolls, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were guiding a transition from rock and roll to glam to punk. This tone change resonated well with Stan.
“I had no regard for authority or society,” said Stan. “I had a very serious ‘fuck y’all” attitude. And that became the basis of the punk scene: Patti Smith, The Ramones, Television. All these groups happening at once, most of them from New York, creating a music scene instantly.”
“The early punk scene in Milwaukee was very small. You could get your ass kicked for being a punk. But it was fun. It matched me. It matched who I was. I was probably 25, 26 at the time, and I was the old guy in the scene! The drinking age was still 18, and the scene was very beer fueled. We’d be dancing and drinking in these crappy little clubs and just having the time of our lives.”
“I studied for a few semesters before dropping out,” said Stan. “I decided to open my own studio in Riverwest and become a punk rock photographer. I got a job working for the Bugle American publication, the ‘rag of the day,’ and became their photo editor. While I was paid, it wasn’t a real moneymaker. I enjoyed the access to shows and events. I suppose you could call the Bugle American a predecessor to the Shepherd Express, but it was far more radical and way more underground.”
“I photographed major concerts and events but really felt myself drawn to the punk rock scene. My studio was a mere three blocks from Zak’s on North Avenue, which was the hub of punk rock at the time. I pursued that really hard for 3-4 years.”
Stan also worked briefly for the New York Rocker, a punk and new wave magazine that ran from 1976 to 1982.
He saw some amazing national acts in this timeframe – including Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, David Bowie and more – and captured some candid backstage photos with the stars of the era.
“I was mostly photographing musicians live on stage,” said Stan, “but my intent was to photograph the musicians individually. Almost like mug shots: I’d stand them up in front of an interesting backdrop and take several shots of them.”
Some of these photos were later donated to the Milwaukee Art Museum, where they are archived as the Milwaukee’s Blank Generation collection.
“I really didn’t get to hang with most musicians,” said Stan. “Some of them I found fabulous, and some of them were pricks. Iggy Pop was the best. We got to hang out over a couple day period. I got to talk to David Byrne for an hour which was pretty cool. Chris Stein from Blondie was a down-to-earth cool guy, talking to me about his kids. David Johansson of the New York Dolls was completely showbiz: he was charming, sincere, funny, talked to everyone. I partied with Rick Danko from The Band. Allen Ginsburg kissed me on the lips, with his big fat tongue in my mouth. That was kind of shitty. Charles Bukowski called me a name I won’t repeat. What? Really?”
“The Talking Heads used four of my portraits for their Sand in the Vaseline album,” said Stan. “And about 10 years ago, I went to the Chelsea Hotel for a show of Dee Dee Ramone’s artwork, because they used my photograph of Dee Dee for the exhibit.”
Sometimes, this access came with an unexpected price.
“I got punched out an Elvis Costello concert,” said Stan, “and I got my photo taken bleeding and raw. It’s pretty cute. It was the height of my days on the punk rock scene. I believe it even got published in the Bugle American. When Wendy O. Williams got taken outside and beaten up by police after her show, I was there, but I wouldn’t go outside. If I had gone outside, they would have beaten me up too.”
“I knew it was a historic scene. I knew my photographs were museum-worthy. I knew that at the time. And I knew I was capturing a moment in history. But the scene started to fizzle out, started to feel redundant and derivative and imitative, so I needed to do something else for awhile.”
In 1981, Stan decided to take on a new challenge. He moved to New Mexico where he became a photographer for the Silver City Daily Press for six months. And then, he decided to become a firefighter and smoke jumper.
“I went to northern California for training, and then jumped for five seasons,” said Stan. “I eventually shattered my ankle in a parachute jump in Idaho, where I hit the top of a tree. That basically ended my career as a smoke jumper.”
When Stan returned to Milwaukee, he found the scene had changed drastically.
“When I was out west fighting fires, I wasn’t paying attention to the music scene at all. I didn’t know what house music was, but I stumbled into it, and I was like oh my god, nobody is talking about this. The music magazines, the music industry. Nobody was talking about it. It was just happening behind the scenes. It was another underground scene for many years. House music turned into industrial, which turned into techno, which turned into trance, and so forth.”
“The punk scene had bought into that whole ‘everyone’s going to be famous for 15 minutes’ Warhol vibe,” said Stan. “They got what I was doing instantly. They were posing for their 15 minutes of fame. But when I came back, that had all changed. Shows had gotten more professional, and photographers were only allowed in the pit for the first few songs. Photographing shows was now a lot less fun.”
So, from 1988 onward, he began photographing Milwaukee nightlife.
“Coming from a small town, I always thought Milwaukee was cosmopolitan, but the 1970s were so very drab in the Midwest. We needed some color, some fun, some excitement in our lives. And we found it in the alternative scene: the music, the fashion, the people, everything that went with the word alternative.”
“The scene was so intense, people would walk into a space and say, ‘holy Christ, what is going on here?’ The clubs figured out how to put sound into a room with giant speakers. You could get up next to the speakers and feel sound penetrating your body. These places had amazing lighting, smoke machines, people dancing on risers. Girls got there early and danced all night long.”
“Everyone came for the workout. It was so sweaty, so filled with sexual pheromones. You could smell every human being around you. The dance floor is a holy space, and on that space, there are rules. But it’s also people dancing en masse, not so much with each other, as with everybody in that space.”
Stan admits he wasn’t dancing much at the time. He was still on crutches and walking casts from his jumping injury. But photography became a spectator sport for him.
“The flash, at that time, was a powerful electronic flash, and it was brighter than all the lights in the club,” said Stan. “You could see me freezing people from the bar. You see what I was doing photographically from a distance. The dancers knew what was going on – and they loved it. They loved being the center of attention.”
Shooting at concerts with a press pass was one thing. Walking into a nightclub and taking photos on the premises was another thing altogether. Although it was surprisingly rare for customers to carry cameras to clubs – especially gay clubs, where patrons historically feared being outed or even blackmailed – club owners never hassled Stan about shooting photos on their property.
“The camera was a power tool back then,” said Stan. “Showing up with a camera hanging on your neck was a golden ticket. If you had an expensive camera, it was obvious that you were somebody. People simply did not walk around with expensive cameras. I just waltzed into most places, did what I did, and loved every minute of it.”
Stan also took several photos of iconic drag superstars, including Mimi Marks and Miss B.J. Daniels.
“B.J. had a show in the Third ward, and I photographed him at the show. It’s a picture of him seriously punked out, seriously ‘heroin chic.’ It’s very much in the style of Klaus Nomi. It’s incredible. I also took a series of B.J. photos at his apartment, including one in a bubble bath. He was a fabulous model for the camera, who knew exactly what to do and what he was doing.”
“Very few of these photos have survived,” said Stan. “We were living in the Norman Apartments when it burned. It was a large, old, haunted-looking building that was always filled with creative weirdos: artists, musicians, club kids, kind of like a low-rent Chelsea Hotel.”
Stan was home, in bed, on the morning the fire broke out on Jan. 12, 1991. As a trained firefighter, his first instinct was to stop the fire from spreading.
“I jumped out of bed, rushed down to the blaze, and tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher. That didn’t work. I ran around knocking on doors, trying to alert people to get out, when I noticed the staircase I’d come downstairs on had now burst into flames.”
“I acted kind of naively. I was somewhat impulsive. I was used to fighting forest fires, so I didn’t really have a concept of how fast a building can burn.”
“I had to rush up the back stairs and enter my apartment through the back door. I grabbed my camera and a couple bags of photos. It was all I had time to grab. Some of the punk rock photos, and some of the dance photos. Some of them had already burned, others I carried out of the fire. And the fire was right on my tail as I escaped.”
Four residents lost their lives that morning and the Norman was a total loss. As inspectors sorted through the ruins, Stan was determined to recover as much of his collection as possible.
“A few days later, I dressed as a construction worker, in a hard hat and gloves, and walked up the back stairs into my apartment,” said Stan. “It was completely off limits. You weren’t allowed up there. It was taped off, but that didn’t stop me. It was very dangerous: there was a gaping hole from my bedroom and living room down to the basement. The fire had burnt straight up through the center of the building leaving a gaping hole.”
“I retrieved a couple gym bags full of burned photographs, slides, and bric-a-brac. That’s how a good sampling of my work survived the fire.”
“The police were waiting for me when I got downstairs, but they never pressed charges.”
After the Norman Fire, Stan stopped doing club photography. For the past 25 years, he has called Walker’s Point home. He bought a historic house and has been remodeling, refurbishing, and redesigning the space. He’s done house painting, window washing, and bar/café work at Fuel Café and other locations. But he’s no longer doing professional camera work.
“When photography changed to digital, I didn’t make the change with it,” he laughs. “I am a proud Luddite. Sure, I use my phone to take cat pictures, but I don’t seriously pursue that medium anymore.”
Today, Stan calls himself an “ex-photographer.” He curated a show with his son, Adonis, at Fuel Café, served as the artist in residence at Hi-Fi Café, hosted a show at Grove Gallery, and joined printing group Dry Points to produce a series of full-sized mixed media posters featuring Milwaukee’s historic founders. But he doesn’t go to too many parties anymore, much less nightclubs.
Since the turn of the century, photography hasn’t stopped changing. First, the widespread adoption and continuous evolution of mobile photography allowed anyone, anywhere, anytime to document their experience with their phones. And now, artificial intelligence engines are generating as much – if not more – photographs than human beings. How does Stan feel about this ongoing transition?
“All photographs are a lie to begin with,” said Stan, “and all of my photographs are curated moments. I was after the eye contact, the moment where they knew they were being photographed, and leaned into that moment. Photography can be a very vampiric sport: where you’re trying to capture a little piece of a soul, if you’re lucky, if the shot is good.”
“As someone trained on guns from a very early age, I can tell you, it’s very similar to shooting a gun. Steady yourself, take a full breath, let it out. Take half a breath, hold your breath, squeeze off the shot.”
“Well, people aren’t squeezing the shots anymore. They punch them up. Today’s phones are like a mini cannon. Everyone is shooting a million shots. With both a rifle and a camera, you’re anticipating the future. You have to anticipate your subject. Whereas with mobile cameras, you just fire blind and hope you hit it.”
“So yeah, photography has changed. How you take a picture has changed. How it feels to capture the shot has changed. It’s all become a bit like monkeys with typewriters. TikTok is Andy Warhol’s prediction come true. Everyone is now the subject, the photographer, and the director at the same time.
“In the punk era, my subjects understood portrait behavior. They were all posers. Now everyone understands, and practices it. Think of the face everyone makes for a selfie.
“Don’t get me wrong, the phone cameras are superior to anything we had in the old days. You don’t need to get in a room with chemicals ever again. But it’s just not quite the same.
“I think it’s fair to say we are living in a renaissance for the image. But a lot of the art I see now is made on computers. Some of it is really wonderful stuff, but most of it has this sort of computer sheen to it. You see so many fake images in advertising now. It doesn’t look real. I can only hope it gets better, but I’ll admit it’s frightening in a sense. AI might be the new god. I’ll continue to make images, but I’ll be doing them the old-fashioned way.”
Why did Stan choose to donate his photos to the Forever Young Project – and why now? For him, it’s all about legacy.
“I was connected to the project through a mutual friend, Katherine Juchemich,” said Stan, “and after meeting with the group, I knew they would be a good steward for my collection. They’re telling a story that elevates and celebrates my body of work. It’s not a story anyone else has really told.”
“These prints are one of a kind now,” said Stan. “They are artifacts of the 20th century. These two bodies of work have become history. There’s no money in this, and there never was. I no longer think there ever will be. So, donating them to a project like this is a load off my shoulders. There’s a certain responsibility to having slivers of people’s souls and nowhere to share them. By including the photographs in the book project, they’ll be seen and appreciated by more people than any gallery show.”
“With these landing in the right place, I can focus on new stuff I’m working on. This is the old stuff. I’ve seen these things a million times. I don’t need them on my walls. I don’t want to get bored by them. I want others to see them, enjoy them, and share them 40 years from now and longer.”
"Forever Young: A Tribute to Wisconsin’s 21-Below Nightlife" will be published by the History Press in late 2025.
