Who

Patrick McMullan has been to more parties than any other person in New York—the nightlife veteran has been taking flattering photos of the city's social set for over thirty years.

Backstory

Brooklyn-born McMullan grew up in Huntington, Long Island, and after high school (where he was voted "Most Friendly") he attended a two-year college while paying the bills as a landscaper and salesman in the city's diamond district. McMullan eventually transferred to NYU to major in business, but ended up, he says, "minoring in Studio 54" and soon found himself sucked into the social swirl. He started taking photos around the same time—his early mentor was photographer Terry Stephenson—but everything came to a halt when McMullan was diagnosed with testicular cancer. (He was 23.) During his year-long hospitalization, he shot photos of his medical staff and hospital room to assuage his boredom; following his recuperation, in 1983 he was given a photo column in Details and Andy Warhol commissioned him to take shots of the downtown party circuit for his Interview magazine. McMullan's since taken photos for dozens of magazines and currently serves as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and the "Party Lines" editor for New York.

Of note

More than three decades later, McMullan's still going at it, although it's not like he's out every night, hitting six events from the Upper East Side to Tribeca. He now presides over a profitable little agency, dispatching photographers to cover benefits, premieres, retail launches and the like, and then selling photos to the media (and, to a lesser extent, to the people depicted in the pics via PatrickMcMullan.com). Just don't refer to him as a paparazzo. McMullan's shutterbugs only show up where they're invited, they never shoot anyone who doesn't want to be photographed, and PMc shots are almost unfailingly flattering. That explains why he's loved by the glamorous people who attend these events. Indeed, McMullan is an indispensable ally to socialites or anyone with social aspiration to burn, and they all shamelessly gravitate toward his lens.

In print

The tireless shutterbug has snapped literally millions of photos over his career, and inevitably he's repackaged some of that work as books. His photos have been collected in Men's Show, Secrets of the Riviera, and the 2003 tome so80s. His photographic takes on Fashion Week were compiled in the 2004's InTents; McMullan's Kiss Kiss—which is, of course, a collection of shots of celebrities making out—was published in 2006. His most recent book is Glamour Girls, "one of the largest collections of photographs ever published of the world's most celebrated women," which was released in 2007.

Personal

Now openly gay, McMullan lived with painter Laurie Ogle in the late 1980s—the union produced a son, Liam, who's a budding social fixture himself and a regular sight at the events McMullan covers. Patrick has resided in the same 500-square-foot apartment, on lower Fifth Avenue in the Village, since he was 22.