Picturing Chicago nightclubs in the 1970s and their charm. Before a career photographing the likes of Oprah and Steve Jobs for major US publications, the late Michael Abramson headed to Chicago’s South Side and documented the wild parties of the funk and disco era.

From Michael Abramson who was a a rarity in 1970s Chicago: a white photographer documenting the black nightclubs in the city’s rough, vibrant South Side to earning a master’s in photography from the Illinois Institute of Technology, all these captions will give you thrills.

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Michael Abramson was a a rarity in 1970s Chicago: a white photographer documenting the black nightclubs in the city’s rough, vibrant South Side. An exhibition of Abramson’s work is at MMX Gallery, London, 21 March-6 May.

All photographs: Michael Abramson/courtesy MMX Gallery

Born in 1948, Abramson earned a master’s in photography from the Illinois Institute of Technology

He was inspired by the mid-century Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï, who documented the nightlife of Paris in a raw, romantic manner

He began photographing the nightlife of Chicago’s South Side, a predominantly black neighbourhood where club-goers would go to dance to blues, R&B, and later funk and disco

The series won Abramson a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978 – and launched his career as a photojournalist

This image, like others in the series, was taken at Perv’s House, described by Abramson as ‘the Cadillac of the clubs I visited – like a Playboy Club for the South Side’

Abramson was far from a dispassionate observer – he danced and drank with the clubs’ patrons

He would give the photos he took to the club-goers he photographed

Abramson once said: ‘I realise I have been to every part of the planet … But I have never been as far away as I was when I was on the South Side of Chicago. Not because it was exotic, but because it was so exhilarating’

‘Michael liked this photo because the train was full of white people,’ Midge Wilson, Abramson’s long-time partner, told Chicago Magazine. ‘For them, [whizzing through the South Side] was a voyeuristic, safe kind of experience. And for Michael, it was real. He was there’

Abramson went on to have a successful career in photojournalism, photographing Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and Steve Jobs for Time, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other publications

He became known for quirky conceits – a portrait of Kellogg’s executives, for example, featured them eating bowls of cereal in the company boardroom