‘My flash kept blinding everyone on the dancefloor’: Elaine Constantine on capturing 90s northern soul all-nighters

The UK photographer took these powerful shots of northern soul nights 30 years ago. Now collected in a new book and exhibition, they offer an intimate glimpse of a peculiarly British subculture

In 1993, Elaine Constantine was commissioned by the Face magazine to photograph a northern soul night at the 100 Club in London. “It was challenging, to say the least,” she recalls. “The place was really dark except for the illuminated signs for the exits and the toilets, and a few lamps above the record decks. The only way to photograph was with a flash, which kept blinding everyone on the dancefloor.”

Having recently moved to London from Manchester, Constantine had come of age on the northern soul scene a decade earlier, regularly attending all-nighters across the country as a teenager. At the 100 Club, she immediately noticed that the crowd was older and the records more obscure, but the dancers were as energetic and self-absorbed as ever. When she heard the familiar propulsive thump of Lester Tipton’s rare mid-60s record This Won’t Change, it proved irresistible. She put down her camera under a chair and took to the dancefloor, losing herself in the music until the dawn.

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