Stephen Benyunes — DTPM 1994

This portrait of Stephen Benyunes is part of an ongoing personal project called The Friendly Tree — a series about friendships formed over more than 20 years of living in London, and how chance meetings can quietly shape the course of a life.

The Friendly Tree Series

London is a notoriously transient place, not somewhere people usually put down roots. I originally came here to study, but 30 years later I’m still here. My own Friendly Tree begins with Stephen Benyunes, who I randomly started chatting to at a club back in 1993.

Friendship, Family and Chance

Over the years I have built friendships and connections that operate in the same way as the family I left behind many years ago. Reflecting on the importance of these people in my life, it struck me that many of these meetings happened entirely by chance.

Connections forged in a moment, then nurtured through shared experience. At the time, these encounters were fragile — but over the years they established into something permanent.

Like the branches of a tree, these chance meetings with like-minded individuals led to further meetings, and the Friendly Tree was born. The Friendly Tree was a metaphor a friend came up with to describe the structure of support that we build in the absence of traditional family systems.

Meeting Stephen

This is Stephen Benyunes, and I consider him the first good long-standing friend I made in London.

We met in a gay club called DTPM back in 1994. It was held in a basement bar restaurant called Villa Stefano next to Holborn tube station. I was dragged there by the chefs I was sharing a house with at the time.

If I hadn’t sat down and started chatting to him that day, my life now would be very different in terms of the friends I have and the places I’ve been. I owe him a lot, and I wanted to take a portrait that reflects the depth of that friendship.

One of life’s serendipitous moments.

Stephen’s Take on Those Times

Here’s Stephen’s own memory of those days:

“DTPM was at Villa Stefano [sic] and it was where we met in February 1994. This was a club that in the early days was the Sunday after-hours haunt of the most extreme and flamboyant members of London’s gay clubbing subculture. It was colourful, chaotic and compulsive and the same characters would be there every week, more than likely in the exact same spot, give or take a few centimeters. Everybody would traipse over there from Trade around Sunday lunchtime, very much the worse for wear, and altogether a rather frightening sight for the afternoon shoppers and tourists. It was a restaurant on weekdays and we got chatting while sat side by side taking a time-out on one of the tables. We got on famously and, of course, like everyone else, we were back at Villa Stefano the next Sunday, and the Sunday after, and the Sunday after that, etc. etc.”

I feel lucky that a random conversation then led to a friendship that has shaped so much of my life since.