1st fashion show ever (!!)

Less then one year after I started to develop a 'serious' interest in photography, and less then two months after I had entered the first year of my 4 year course at the Academy of Arts
How to shoot a catwalk show obviously wasn't part of the curriculum, nor had any of the teachers any experience doing so
No you tube video's or tutorials around yet on how to shoot a catwalk show, nor even any books or dedicated articles written that could have given any kind of hands up, especially given the technical limitations of the photographic equipment of the time
Specialized catwalk photographers, who wouldn't have shared their experience anyway, were still a very rare breed, and therefor next to impossible to find, nor the nowadays hordes of middle aged, peno pause driven wannabe 'photographers' with digital cameras and fast big lenses

But my sister was one of the models, so obviously and inescapably I couldn't turn down her request
In hindsight pretty much something of a miracle that in the end I got any usable images at all, considering, despite my enthusiasm and drive, the lack of knowledge on how to shoot or experience with shooting a catwalk show, my technically severely limited equipment (no motordrive, only 4.5 80-200 and 3.5 43-86mm manual focus lenses, max 800 ISO Tri X), and 'artistic' lighting, i.e. only low tech, mainly building site type of lights, in what at that time was a squatted garage)
Which basically meant the whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen to begin with, as most of the pictures unfortunately show
But from an 'artistic' point of view maybe not that bad :-)

Personal note on images 055, 031, 050, 051, 052, 053 and 054
Janice, the first transgender model, and one of the most couragious people I ever met
For anybody LGBT in the late 70's / early 80's their life and sexuality weren't as 'easy' or as widely accepted as nowadays
But for a transgender in those days, the challenge, apart from being looked at as something of a freak, was perhaps even much bigger, not in the last place because of the medical procedure which basically still in its infancies, not yet performed at many locations, and in the 70's only easily accessible (and affordable for the non cash capable) in shady clinics in places like eg Casablance
Janice once in a quiet moment of pain and introspection described it as pretty crude, basically just 'put your junk on the chapping block', no sophisticated neurological or similar reconstructions, but literally just ' put a plug in the hole'
Yet she lived trough all that, and apart from the flamboyant personality she would some time seem to be in public, still managed to be a sweet and caring person if you took the time to get to know her better