NEW YORK: ALVIN BALTROP

At the Hudson River Piers
June 29 - August 19, 2017

Images selected by Douglas Crimp

GALERIE BUCHHOLZ
17 East 82nd Street
New York, NY 

From Third Steaming (3S) e-blast:

"The photographs of Alvin Baltrop (1948-2004) were virtually unknown during the artist’s lifetime. A working-class African-American many of whose photographs are sexually explicit, Baltrop encountered only rejection. In the past decade, his work has belatedly begun to be exhibited, including at Third Streaming and MoMA/PS1 in New York City, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. By far the largest cache of Baltrop’s extant photographs depicts the scene at the dilapidated Hudson River piers adjacent to Greenwich Village and the Meat Packing District. During the 1970s and into the 1980s, when Baltrop photographed there, the piers were a site of pleasure and danger for men seeking sex, sunbathing, making a provisional home, or just hanging out and taking in the splendor of the industrial ruins. More nefarious deeds also took place: theft, gay-bashing, even murder." - Douglas Crimp