Cet album présente le travail du photographe qui a documenté de façon obsessionnelle la culture gay underground des débuts à New York, à l’occasion de sa première rétrospective.
Pendant 11 années obsessionnelles dans les années 1970 et 1980, le photographe, né dans le Bronx, Alvin Baltrop a documenté le monde alternatif qui existait dans cette partie de la ville autrefois délabrée, capturant ceux de passage, ceux qui prenaient le soleil, les fornicateurs et les amis dans ce bref instant après les émeutes de Stonewall et avant l’explosion de l’épidémie du sida.
Le livre présente ces photos et d’autres d’Alvin Baltrop, dont plusieurs n’ont jamais été montrées en public, et est publié à l’occasion de la toute première rétrospective de l’artiste au Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Né en 1948, Baltrop prend des photos dans son adolescence. Il a emporté son appareil photo avec lui au Vietnam, où il a servi dans la marine et a pris l’habitude de photographier ses collègues marins. De retour à New York en 1972, il s’inscrit à la School of Visual Arts. Il a commencé à photographier sur les quais en 1975 – un projet, avec des milliers de négatifs profonds, qui allait englober une grande partie de sa vie. Il y était tellement dévoué qu’il a quitté son emploi de jour comme chauffeur de taxi et prenait souvent des photos sur les quais pendant des jours d’affilée, vivant dans une camionnette.
Après une longue bataille contre le cancer, Baltrop est mort en 2004, ayant exposé son travail très peu de fois au cours de sa vie ; édité par Antonio Sergio Bessa, introduction de Douglas Crimp, texte de Adrienne Edwards, Allen Frame et Mia Kang, photos en n.b.
“Although initially terrified of the piers, I began to take these photos as a voyeur [and] soon grew determined to preserve the frightening, mad, unbelievable, violent, and beautiful things that were going on at that time,” Baltrop wrote in the preface to an unfinished book of these photographs. “To get certain shots, I hung from the ceilings of several warehouses utilizing a makeshift harness, watching and waiting for hours to record the lives that these people led (friends, acquaintances, and strangers), and the unfortunate ends that they sometimes met.” -Alvin Baltrop.
The photographer who obsessively documented New York’s early underground gay culture, on the occasion of his first retrospective.
For 11 obsessive years in 1970s and ’80s, the Bronx-born photographer Alvin Baltrop documented the alternative world that existed in this once-run-down part of the city, capturing cruisers, sun-bathers, fornicators, and friends in that brief moment after the Stonewall riots and before the explosion of the AIDS epidemic.
The book presents those photos and others by Baltrop, including many that have never been shown in public, and is publicated on the occasion of the late artist’s first-ever retrospective at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Born in 1948, Baltrop picked up photography in his teens. He carried his camera with him to Vietnam, where he served in the navy and made a habit of photographing his fellow sailors. He moved back to New York in 1972, enrolling at the School of Visual Arts. He began shooting the piers in 1975 – a project, thousands of negatives deep, that would come to encompass much of his life. He was so dedicated to it that he quit his day job as a taxi driver and would often photograph at the piers for days straight, living out of a van.
After a lengthy battle with cancer, Baltrop died in 2004, having exhibited his work very few times during his lifetime.
