West side piers nyc gay

July 8, Thom Bettridge. In the s and 80s, the unused piers that dotted this riverside stretch became a haven for gay men who, on account of sodomy laws that banned homosexual intercourse, were forced to play in the fringes. In this semi-protected zone, the vulnerability of a precarious lifestyle was allowed to flourish into true intimacy.

Cruisers and hustlers sunbathed on the piers with the grace of ancient greek bathhouse-goers. It was a space that afforded leisure, chance encounters, and anonymous sex. The piers were a place for petty criminals and artists without a stage. The African-American photographer Alvin Baltrop, who captured this scene in black-and-white, falls into the latter category.

A Bronx-born veteran and taxi driver, Baltrop did not only photograph the men from the pier, he did so hanging from the rusty warehouse ceiling in a make-shift harness. And they let him, because he was one of them. In this sense, the piers were a counter-proposal for a future that never happened.

A sunny space near the ocean is a human right. What inspired you to begin this project? Was that image of two men fucking in the ruins a eureka moment for you? In there was an encyclopaedic group show at the Reina Sofia in Madrid called Mixed Use, Manhattan that filled an entire west side piers nyc gay there.

It featured works from a whole raft of pioneering artists, photographers, and filmmakers like Danny Lyon, the Bechers, James Welling, David Hammons, Sol LeWitt, and Steve McQueen, all of whose work in the show explored the aesthetic allure and potential of Manhattan in varying ways.

There was a lot of great, stand-out work and a lot of larger scale work that grabbed your attention. The pictures were so discrete that you almost passed them right by. It was only when I did a second run through of the show that I gave them a closer look and was amazed as these figures emerged from the mangled buildings in these prints.

First just fleeting shadows, torsos struck by a shaft on sunlight. And then it became apparent these figures were naked gay men cruising or — in the case of the image that became the cover of the book — having full sex in the ruins of the West Side piers in New York. They were astonishing images — so raw and powerful.

The subcultures of downtown New York have been mapped so many times. Especially in photography. And he obviously had the trust of his subjects, so some of the images are just staggering. He had a great eye. The compositions and use of light in the more architectural shots are so strong.

ALVIN BALTROP and the Unofficial History of Cruising on Manhattan’s West Side Piers

I also think this particular scene was so unknown to most outsiders that it was something of a revelation when his images finally came to public attention years later. Something striking about the book is how it oscillates from moments of totally bucolic sexual freedom and dark snippets of social brutality.

Are these types of extremes something that exist today? Or has this huge bandwidth of pleasure-pain mellowed out with time? Magazine Store Readytowear.