From 2011-2021, London’s clubbers descended upon a hackney basement once a month for a club night simply-named ‘PDA’. PDA is multivalent acronym, variously meaning 

Public Display of Affection, Panic Disco Arena, Pretty Dick Available, and, crucially, Please Don’t Ask. Whatever the case may be, PDA was a space for LGBTPOC to come together and let loose.

For the making of PDA, the photobook, photographer Liz Johnson Artur became a club regular, capturing the happenings on and off the dancefloor; including the entrance stairwell, which has gained a cult status of its own having been the set of SHYGIRL’s music video for BEAUTS. The book is a continuation of Artur’s photography practice that centres an investigation of and reverence for community, particularly amongst those who are part of and descended from diaspora. 

PDA, the club, offered a joyous space where partygoers could express themselves amid a hostile outside environment. This feeling of freedom is reflected in Artur’s images- shots of intertwined dancers contrast with sharply-posed portraits of individual revellers. The narrative also takes us beyond the walls of the club, we see looks-in-construction in domestic spaces and open-air moments of respite (or a cigarette) - all of this a testament to Artur’s immersion in the PDA community and the aura of mutual trust and understanding that radiates from the book’s pages. The images were selected in collaboration with participants and the club’s founders Akinola Davies Jr, Mischa Mafia, and Ms Carrie Stacks, who is featured on the book’s cover and throughout. 

The beginning of 2026 feels like an apt moment for the release of this title. Much has been made of the potential for club space to behave in a revolutionary manner, and it feels increasingly as though revolution is needed. Artur’s photos respond to this by projecting images from a past of recent memory into an imagined future that we are invited to partake in imagining too. What does it mean to gather? What does a community space look like? How can space push the limits of our expression? PDA sets out, not to provide any definitive answers to these questions, but to create the conditions in which these questions may continue to be asked, and answers striven towards. 

Text: William Aghoghogbe