From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The eyes of the party

As the unofficial photographer of Miami nightlife, Jipsy Castillo, a.k.a. Nefarious Girl, captures a world in which everyone looks great, has fun and could be the next big thing. Just don't let her catch you posing.

By Terra Sullivan

August 29 2007

It's a sultry, armpit-staining Saturday night, and young, taut bodies are snaking through a small maze of velvet ropes outside downtown Miami's Pawn Shop Lounge, each one waiting for the doorman to throw a nod of approval his or her way. Inside the venue, the lively indie dance party Poplife is celebrating what few nightclub events ever can: eight years in business. Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" is spinning within the school bus turned DJ booth, and the energy in the space gravitates toward a woman hiding under a canopy of large, white balloons and clutching a Canon EOS 20D camera. Sporting a long, black and weaved ponytail, gold door-knocker earrings and two matching beauty marks on her left cheek, the woman scans the room. Suddenly, she becomes kinetic, darting around the club, snapping pictures and leaving a trail of momentarily flash-blinded eyeballs behind her. Nefarious Girl is on the scene.

Nightlife photographers have been around almost as long as nightclubs themselves. In the 1970s, Bobby Miller chronicled the debauchery inside New York's Studio 54, and in the '80s, Amy Arbus famously documented the city's scenesters, including a pre-fame Madonna. But in the past few years, nightlife photography has reached a new level of accessibility, with Web sites such as Lastnightsparty.com and Thecobrasnake.com garnering daily hits in the thousands and forever blowing the chance at a political career for the people who've allowed themselves to be photographed drenched in champagne and exposing their genitalia. Following its launch in October 2004, Last Night's Party primarily featured everyday clubbers, but celebrities such as Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz now routinely appear on the site. Last year, the site published the book Lastnightsparty: Where Were You Last Night?

Based in Miami Beach, Nefariousgirl.com depicts a nightclub scene populated by scruffy downtowners, fashionistas, hip-hop heads and greasy rockers. And a few days after the Poplife party, the site's operator, Jipsy Castillo, has removed the ponytail and is sitting inside the Miami Beach apartment she shares with her husband, Carlos, reflecting on that scene and her role as its unofficial archivist. A self-described homebody, Nefarious Girl inhabits a Spartan living space, with the few personal objects on display including a copy of The Devil Wears Prada, picture books on the art of catwalking and New York in the 1970s, and girlie-drink essentials such as grenadine syrup and Cook's California Champagne. A visitor to the apartment gets the sense Castillo keeps it minimally decorated to offset the ostentatious surroundings in which she often finds herself at night.

"I'm fast," Castillo says of her work. "You can't follow me. Party photographers need to take pictures of the party, not just the people — get a feel of the party. When I'd come back home and look at the pictures [I'd taken], I'd think, 'Wow, that looked like a great party!'"

Her best photos capture club life at its most uninhibited, with images so real you can almost smell the cigarette smoke and booze breath coming off her subjects. Castillo grew up dividing her time between Miami and Queens, N.Y., where she attended the Art and Design High School, which counts designers Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein among its alumni. At an early age, Castillo began taking pictures to record her life the way other girls scribbled diary entries.

"I document my life," she says. "I always have. I have pictures of getting my tooth pulled, my hair cut. I love it because that's it. What you and I are having here, that's it; it's gone. That's why I love pictures. It's the moment."

Four years ago, she started hanging out at South Florida parties such as Revolver and Poplife, and decided to make a concerted effort to shoot more nightlife photos. "It was freedom," she recalls. "I still have pictures from the first night.

"I started seeing pictures for other Miami club sites," she continues, "and I just thought, 'This can be done better. It doesn't always have to be the girl with the breasts doing a little pose.' I thought there was something more than that."

In 2005, she launched Nefariousgirl.com to showcase her work. She won't divulge how much traffic the site generates but says it is significant because "a lot of people love looking at themselves. Everyone under the disco lights looks the same: They look great!"

Castillo makes her living photographing corporate events and social parties, but her nightlife work has appeared in Spin magazine and landed her a column on Cooljunkie.com. As with any avocation, nightlife photography has its share of headaches.

"I get a lot of people who shouldn't be shot with the same person that they're shot with," she explains, "like, if they are not with their boyfriend or girlfriend, and I have to erase them or fix them. That happened this Saturday. This girl grabbed this guy next to her [and] they both e-mailed me the next day [asking], 'Please take it down.'"

Then, there are the posers. "As soon as they start posing, I get upset," she relates. "It's like, 'Let me do my thing. Just be who you are.' And those are the best [subjects]. There's one guy who points up at the sky like he's shooting out the stars, which I love. There's always the hair in the face or the looking-down pose with the hand on the waist where they're holding in their stomachs. I'm glad that one came and went."

Of her least favorite pose, "the middle finger," Castillo says, "Those are the people who don't want their picture taken. That is so done. It's played out."

With the rise of competing Web sites such as Miaminights.com and Thesilverlove.com, photographers can outnumber partyers at some events. "I pull back if I see a lot of photographers," Castillo notes. "It's like, 'Wait, the photographers outweigh the guests here.' It's too much."

Dan Vidal, the photo editor for Cooljunkie.com, says what sets Castillo's work apart from others is that she's not on the outside looking in. "She imbeds herself," he explains. "She's not just documenting the party; she is part of the party."

Recently, Nefarious Girl has branched out to studio portraiture and is working with fashion designers she has met in the clubs. But she's not about to give up documenting South Florida's party scene, of which she has become an ardent defender.

"People think these kids don't do anything but party," she argues. "But they're involved in the business. They work in video. They're reporters, models, photographers, designers, stylists. And 10 years from now, who knows where they're going to be? I know that they're going to be somewhere, and I love it. That's what gets me motivated to go out."

Girl talk

1. Jipsy Castillo gave herself the moniker Nefarious Girl after reading Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire.

2. Castillo describes her style as "the New York '80s girl from the A train who would've kicked my ass growing up."

3. She is currently compiling photos for an as-yet-unscheduled retrospective honoring the Poplife party series.

4. Web site: NEFARIOUSGIRL.COM