I Regret I Am Able to Attend

A bawdy, gimlet-eyed memoir-in-stories capturing a celebrated photographer’s avant-garde coming-of-age in the grit and glamour of 1970s and 80s bohemia

“You may know from Vogue and other glossies, Craig-Martin’s pointed, less-than-flattering photographs of high society. Now read how she got there.”—Roberta Smith

I think in stories; I tell stories, and here are some stories. You may stumble across a narrative arc of some kind, but I’ll be damned if you detect any redemption.

Born to two young, ambitious artists, Jessica Craig-Martin grew up picnicking on oranges from Harrods with David Hockney and reading books on Jasper Johns’s studio ladder to get a moment alone from the crowd. When her parents separated, her life was divided between New York and London, where she navigated the tumultuous relationships, finances, and emotions of her parents and the cross-Atlantic cultural divide.

Largely unsupervised and searching for her place in the world, Craig-Martin tried on many identities: a latchkey kid trying to make sense of her mother’s volatile mood swings and her father’s new relationships; a precocious, hash-smoking student experiencing her first love at a posh boarding school; a punk Dean & DeLuca cashier in Soho selling smoked eel to Jean-Michel Basquiat. She worked as a fashion assistant at British Vogue and assistant to the Features editor at Vanity Fair before becoming an event photographer for the same publications and others, the camera now in her hands.

Wildly witty and observant, I Regret I Am Able to Attend is what Dorothy Parker might have written if she had been a waitress sneaking sips of champagne at Indochine. With a photographer’s keen eye and a bon vivant’s flair, Craig-Martin offers an insider’s perspective into an unforgettable world of fame, excess, and creativity.