His pictures, however, have an appeal that extends beyond the marginal. As part of the British Festival, an exhibition of his work is planned in Tokyo next year.P-P Hartnett will be reading from his novel `Call Me’ (Pulp Books, pounds 7.99) at the Birmingham Readers & Writers Festival on 13 May, and also at Dillons, Argyle St, Glasgow (17 June ); Waterstones, George St, Edinburgh ( 8 June ) and Books Etc, Charing Cross Rd, London (3 July ). His investigations into “loneliness, isolation, sexual compulsion” even led him to contact serial killer Dennis Nilsen, visiting him in Whitemoor Prison and receiving more than 100 letters and paintings from the man who murdered over a dozen young men.Hartnett also began taking photographs again, but not of the mainstream club culture that emerged after acid house. Many more in this gallery are now gone, including Leigh himself, from suicide, asthma, meningitis and, most of all, Aids. Gradually, Hartnett found it hard to continue partying like nothing had happened, particularly since his own boyfriend had been diagnosed HIV. He spent two years at home, reading books, before moving from “documenting people’s outsides, their make-up and accessories, to investigating their fetishes, their inner fantasies.” He began answering and placing contacts ads, documenting what he found in what eventually became a novel, Call Me, published by Pulp Books last autumn. Within weeks of Taboo’s closure, Leigh Bowery’s lover, Trojan, had died of a drugs overdose, as did the club’s charismatic doorman, Marc Vaultier.

The club was raided, and then closed.The meaning of these photographs has changed over time Looking at them now, the feeling they evoke most is sadness. Hosted by the larger- than-life Leigh Bowery, it became a focus for alternative London, a club with a door policy so strict that only the extreme could enter. Hartnett was there every week, “lurking in the corner with my camera like a serial killer”, recording the club’s regulars. It was he, in fact, who got the club closed by casually mentioning – in a piece in the Mail on Sunday, which used his pictures – that the women’s loos there were the best place to take drugs. He used equipment bought from jumble sales and car boot sales (the most expensive piece he ever bought was a tripod for pounds 20), and stresses that he never saw himself as a photographer: his interest wasn’t in technique or in getting his work published (by design, his main outlets were in Japan and Europe, not the British style press), but in meeting his subjects, looking at them and talking to them.The pictures overleaf were all taken in 1985-86 at Taboo, a Thursday night event at Maximus, a disco on Leicester Square. From punk venues like the Roxy and Vortex to New Romantic haunts like Billy’s, Blitz and Club For Heroes, he documented faces adorned with make-up, masks and piercings, faces desperate to be seen, to make their mark if only with a Polaroid in the style press.

He was in Bang, a gay club in Soho, when he saw Sue Catwoman, who was about to become an icon on the London punk scene. He had his mum’s Kodak Instamatic in his bag, and asked if he could take her picture. They started talking, and he discovered that she lived in the next road to him in Ealing, sharing a house with one John Beverly (later to become notorious as Sid Vicious).
“Having a camera seemed like the perfect excuse to approach anybody and get talking to them,” he found, and so, for the next 15 years, Hartnett began obsessively documenting the characters in London nightlife. From punks, Goths and New Romantics to today’s Ecstasy-driven ravers, the photographer P-P Hartnett has spent 20 years documenting midnight’s children and their club culture. Sheryl Garratt recalls the faces, while overleaf, Alix Sharkey traces how their private world has become part of national life

P-P Hartnett took his first picture in a club in 1976, when he was 18. He concludes that there needs to be better fitting vests for women, with a wider range of sizes.. He believes they should be strengthened at the base of the neck, the left side of the chest and the left side of the body, areas where most fatal stabbings occur.His study discovered that in 7.7 per cent of the cases someone was fatally wounded, about a third of the time they received life-threatening injuries, particularly in the face, neck and abdomen, and in about 60 per cent of cases they received minor wounds, typically slash wounds all over the body.The research was part-funded by the Police Federation and will be presented at its annual conference in Blackpool later this month.Mr Bleetman has also considered the effect on women who wear vests and has concluded that there is a short-term risk from inflammation to the breast tissue and “jogger’s nipple”, caused by friction.But he has ruled out any links with cancer.

For knives this standard is unsafe, but with 5mm nothing will get damaged.”He added that the vests are very effective at preventing death from shooting.Mr Bleetman said that there were vests that meet all the specifications but admitted they were more cumbersome. There’s a negligible ballistic threat – ordinary patrol police officers therefore need to be protected from knives first and foremost, not guns.”Under the Home Office standards for body armour the blade of a knife should penetrate no more than five millimetres before being stopped and a bullet can push the vest back 25mm.With the MetVests, a knife can penetrate 20mm and a bullet can push the vest back 44mm.Mr Bleetman examined whether it was safe to allow a knife to enter the body for 20mm.He concluded: “If it goes in this far there’s a much, much higher risk to injury to heart, lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys. His studies show that officers could be in danger of serious injury to heart, lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys.He argues that only a tiny number of patrol officers are shot – in the eight years from 1988 to 1995 there were 90 officers shot while on duty, of whom seven died – compared with the relatively large numbers of knife attacks.In the Metropolitan Police area during 1993 and 1994 two police officers were stabbed to death, 22 seriously injured and 41 received minor wounds. This compares with one fatal shooting and six serious gunshot wounds.Tony Bleetman, an accident and emergency consultant at Heartlands hospital in Birmingham, said: “The biggest threat to patrol officers is from knives. Whitby has since been named the birthplace of the English Literature..