Elizabeth Pulford, Cambridge University Charity Ball, Guildhall, Cambridge, 15 March 1985. © Dafydd Jones
Unless you’re offensively wealthy or unfathomably intelligent, you’ll probably never get to experience the opulence and decadence of a Cambridge University May Ball firsthand. Esteemed party photographer Dafydd Jones, however, has spent the past 40 years infiltrating and capturing generations of the world’s poshest students as they celebrate the survival of yet another grueling academic year. “The strangest, most unexpected things can happen at parties. But they are challenging to photograph, and it is hard to do a decent picture,” Jones revealed to Interview.
In his new book, Cambridge Balls, Jones gives us an inside look at twenty-somethings in perfectly tailored suits jumping off of bridges, wooden boats set ablaze, and the scholarly elite freely grooving on a checkered dance floor. The compilation of photographs, dating all the way back to 1981, titillates in all of us that desire to be young, rich, and untouchable. Yet perhaps more than anything, it indulges in the feeling that a little hedonism is good for the soul and necessary to escape the hell that awaits us in the outside world.
Cambridge Balls is now available for purchase by publisher ACC Art Books, with a selection of its works shown below, including some exclusively for Interview.
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Gatecrasher Rob Collins in stocks and covered in eggs during the Magdalene May Ball, 15 June 1983. © Dafydd Jones
Burning Boats, Downing College, June 1984. © Dafydd Jones
Ralph Brody and Sarah Charles, Pitt Club 150th Anniversary Ball, Newmarket Racecourse, 22 February 1983. © Dafydd Jones
Andrew Soloman and Julie Sheehan, Magdalene May Ball, 17 June 1987. © Dafydd Jones
Survivors, Clare May Ball, 10 June 1985. © Dafydd Jones
Magdalene May Ball 2023, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 21 June 2023. © Dafydd Jones
Toby Mansell-Pleydell, Cambridge Hunt Club Ball, Chilford Barns, Linton, 4 March 1988. © Dafydd Jones
Magdalene May Ball, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 18 June 1997. © Dafydd Jones
6. a.m. Trinity May Ball, Cambridge, 1984. © Dafydd Jones
