Manhattan's decaying industrial waterfront on the Upper West Side provided a resonant backdrop for photographing Dave shortly after we met, before life in New York City morphed him into David. Although it wasn't as busy as the notorious piers in Lower Manhattan, we both cruised there like Boy Scouts seeking merit badges in the demimonde.
Remnants of the railroad yard--including an abandoned YMCA--offered semi-private trysting places.
At 24, Dave had attitude and sexual confidence to spare.
We called these photos his "Hot Shots." When paying tribute to him on Instagram's AIDS Memorial, I used one. My sexy camel has been gone 30 years.
This photo reminds me of the night Paul first took us dancing at the Saint. A shaft of spot light illuminated Dave similarly as he stood on risers in the balcony. Years later, I encountered a Roman statue with the same expression. It inspired the title of my first blog, "Chasing Rapture."
A forgotten roll of black film exposes 1970s New York and exhumes long-shelved photographic ambitions to become the next Weegee, sans stogie. David and I walked downtown to meet some friends for an art show housed in one of the decrepit piers along the West Side Highway.
We passed Lincoln Center, still relatively new. David loved a good goof. Peekaboo.
He must have taken this very uncharacteristic shot of me.
We met Barnet(center) and several of his friends, including Sam (far left), an aspiring actor who had just been cast in the bus and truck production of A Chorus Line. Bill, far right, was an artist who specialized in celebrity caricatures. Barnet and Howie, bearded, had been theater majors at City College and both lived in Manhattan Plaza, subsidized housing for performing artists.
Welcome!
It was quite the scene, with lots of professional photographers. Too bad neither my memory nor Google could find any trace of it.
I must have found it hard to separate the art from the environment.
Sam used to date George C. Wolfe, who went on to direct Angels in America and a lot of other acclaimed theatrical productions. This odd phrase broke though the fog of memory like lavender neon.
As per our usual dynamic, David flirted; I photographed.
How could I have forgotten such an unusual day? Or did rediscovery only enhance its significance, a mechanical rescue of lost time?
What would Alvin Baltrop, who died penniless in 2004 with barely any recognition, have to say about the exhibition of his photos at the Bronx Museum of Art? It's very simply hung which seems fitting given the modesty and poor printed quality of the work.
Mostly black and white, the well-composed photos document his tour in the Navy as well as his fascination with the decaying piers on the west side of Manhattan in the 70s, shortly after a Daily News headline screamed FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. It can't have been easy for a queer black man to capture the homoerotic vibe of life at sea, no matter how discreet he may have been.
The piers didn't require discretion although it's doubtful that the gay men who used them for cruising and sex welcomed Baltrop. If his photographic ID, also on display, is any indication he didn't measure up to clone standards of beauty.
I visited the area on my bike shortly before graduation from college. The World Trade Center loomed to the south, the only downtown symbol of modernity. Anyone cool sneered at the domineering twin phalluses. The carless, elevated highway eventually went the way of the piers.
Rollerblades hadn't been invented and Baltrop, like everybody else, worshipped beer swilling, macho men.
The gallery next door documents a different scene and culture just ten miles north of Manhattan but a world away. Going from the Baltrop exhibit, which showcases the work of a native son of the Bronx, to one that documents the birth of graffiti in the same borough, is like moving from a hushed tomb (or maybe a back room?) to a theme park. As much as I enjoyed both, they made me wonder what the Baltrop exhibit might have looked like if he had had the resources of Henry Chalfant who clearly had a hand in mounting his. Whether intentionally or not, the Bronx Museum illustrates the impact of white privilege on an artist's work, past and present.
The Chalfant exhibit recreates a subway yard in the south Bronx.
Graffiti images shot by Chalfant, whose wife Kathleen is a well-regarded actress, appear on sheets of cloth as long as actual subway cars.
Chalfant's original photos, beautifully framed and mounted, hang in a nearby room. He shot five images of a single, stopped car from a bridge with the sun behind him and later spliced them together in his studio. No "panorama" mode on cameras, then! He had to work fast because the MTA washed off the graffiti as quickly as it could.
Some taggers, as graffiti artists were known, spoofed pop art while others created their own signatures, literally and figuratively.
The Bronx museum also provides a facsimile of the Soho studio where Chalfant printed and assembled his work. His "open-door" policy for taggers helped "some weird white guy" gain their trust. Altrop, by contrast, had only a couple of cameras and needed food stamps to survive, even with veteran benefits.
Chalfant, not quite a decade older than Altrop, partied with the taggers, too. Here, Madonna gets down with Crazy Legs at Danceteria. Those were the days!
When Chalfant froze this group of taggers in time (including Crazy Legs, 2nd from the left), I wasn't much older than they were.
Chalfant also caught the movement of graffiti from the subway to the streets.
Look no further than the Grand Concourse, just outside, to find some today.
Time erases street art, too, but digital photography makes it a lot easier to preserve.
