Ahead of a new exhibn at Kapp Kapp gallery, photographer Stanley Stellar remisc about gay life at the much-mythologised New York piers the 70s and 80s
Contents:
- A LOST UTOPIA: STANLEY STELLAR’S PORTRAS AT NEW YORK’S “GAY PIERS”
- HE CAPTURED A CLANSTE GAY CULTURE AMID THE DERELICT PIERS
A LOST UTOPIA: STANLEY STELLAR’S PORTRAS AT NEW YORK’S “GAY PIERS”
* gay piers *
By the 1960s, the massive piers along Manhattan’s Hudson River wateront that projected to the water stood largely abandoned and easily accsible om Greenwich Village, which gay men were begng to take over. In the ’70s and ’80s, the piers beme a popular spot for gay men to sunbathe naked beneath huge murals by artists like Gtav “Tava” Von Will. What this space lacked fort and ameni for timate liaisons, ma up for by providg the anonymy gay men required at the time to survive.
HE CAPTURED A CLANSTE GAY CULTURE AMID THE DERELICT PIERS
For over a century, the Greenwich Village wateront along the Hudson River, cludg the Christopher Street Pier at Wt 10th and Wt Streets, has been a statn for the LGBT muny that has evolved om a place for cisg and sex for gay men to an important safe haven for a margalized queer muny – mostly queer homels youth of lor.
By World War I, the area had bee a popular cisg area for gay men, and by the 1930s the openg of the elevated Miller (Wt Si) Highway (now molished) cut through the area makg more of a backwater. The ncentratn of men, numero bars and wareho, and nighttime isolatn tablished the wateront as one of the ma centers for gay life that thrived well after World War II. This enabled the area to reta s populary for gay men to cise and have sex at night.