Abandoned French Discos

I once spent a midweek night at La Nuit disco in Avallon, France. Sandrine was dancing alone in front of a huge mirror. The room was dark; the decor a felty jungle print wallpaper, lace curtains on the windows, and sticky leatherette and wood chairs that oozed like adipose flesh when you sat on them. The bar served pink Monacos and brandy. At 11pm the carpark was filled with trucks and lorries. “They all get naked in an hour,” the barman told me. Wham! came on and Sandrine was no longer dancing alone. Eric Tabuchi hasn’t got a picture of La Nuit. His photographs of abandoned vernacular and diverse architecture encompass petrol stations, follies after former discotheques. The names of these discos spirit you away – La Tour de Londres, Le Spinx, Memphis, Palm Beach and, of course, Paradise. So ‘let’s all have a disco’, as the England football fans sang at World Cup Italia 1990. It’s where the beautiful people go to see and be seen: