Nineties nightlife captured in hundreds of rarely seen shots as Mark McNulty launches 'In Clubland'

A story of dance floor culture that starts in 1990 within the euphoric walls of legendary all-night Liverpool nightclub, Quadrant Park and travels through era-defining clubbing institutions such as BackIIBasics in Leeds, Berlin’s Tresor and The Hacienda, is told in 550 rarely seen photographs by photographer, Mark McNulty. Published together for the first time in IN CLUBLAND: 35 SUMMERS OF LOVE, a new 240-page book published on Thu 5 November 2026 by Modern Sky, the candid images show nostalgic scenes of nocturnal euphoria, legendary DJs and changing trends in clubbing fashion.

Fleetingly a member of a band that played on the same stages as Stone Roses, Pulp and The Las, McNulty began instead using his guest passes to gigs, festivals and nightclubs to take photographs from the mid-1980’s onwards. With frontline access to the rapidly developing rave scene at the end of that decade and the start of the nineties, McNulty picked up commissions from magazines such as The Face and ID Magazine, bringing the North Of England’s revolution in youth culture to an international readership.

Beside extensive texts by McNulty recollecting the exact times, places and people of each era contained within the book, more than 190 pages of In Clubland are solely dedicated to high-quality reproductions of close-up shots of iconic British and European club nights. Fly-on-the-wall images of Liverpool’s pioneering superclub, Cream, Bristol’s The Lakota and Nottingham’s Heavenly Social (featuring cameos from Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers) are amongst an extensive, eye-opening selection that also include explorations into emerging scenes in Italy and Germany.

Moving beyond the 1990’s, In Clubland captures the development of club culture past the birth, life and death of rave and into noughties hedonism, including Garlands, Bugged Out! at Nation and Club EVOL at EBGB’s in Liverpool, alongside soul all-nighters in Southport and festivals including Creamfields. Emerging into the present day, the book concludes at Eurovision 2023 with the rise of a new generation of DJs, including the all-female line-up of Girls Don’t Sync.

Image: After hours party in a car park in Birmingham, 1992 Mark McNulty

“My nightclub years are well and truly behind me, and late-night capers are mostly a thing of the past,” says McNulty. “The time I used to go out is now the time I go to bed, and the photographs of the places I went to, played in, danced in, and photographed are starting to appear on the walls of museums and galleries. But people of all ages are still going out at night, and the scenes that we thought were ours have just evolved and changed. The world carries on, and the discotheque most certainly doesn't stop for anybody.”

Born and raised in Liverpool before relocating to rural North Wales, McNulty’s extensive archive of images has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at both at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and Oriel Colwyn, the latter opening in 2022, titled 35 Summers. The book arrives as a result of extensive exhibition research and is announced at the same time as several of his photographs are exhibited as part of the British Culture Archive’s Tate Britain exhibition, The 90’s: Art & Fashion, alongside work by artists and designers including Damien Hirst and Vivienne Westwood.

Renowned independent record label and artist management company, Modern Sky have a deserved international reputation for finding and nurturing new talent, as well as supporting established artists to achieve critical and commercial success. In Clubland is the company’s first venture into publishing, collaborating with McNulty to bring his archive to as wide a readership as possible.

Modern Sky’s Dave Pichilingi adds: "I've known Mark for many years and shared many an acid house dancefloor with him back in the glory days of clubbing. We lived through a period that genuinely changed culture, where music, people and nights out felt like they could change your life. Mark was always right in the middle of it. This isn't someone writing about club culture from the outside looking in; he lived it. We're incredibly proud to be bringing 'In Clubland' into the Modern Sky family."