Tom Bianchi’s sun-drenched Polaroids capture the halcyon days of Fire Island Pines
Bulging Speedos, tight Levis, tanned torsos and hosepipes galore: Tom Bianchi’s Polaroids capture summer sexiness through the eroticised male body.
Bianchi – a photographer and writer from suburban Chicago who has published more than 20 books of work – began visiting Fire Island Pines in the 1970s, where he snapped gay couples cavorting on vacation on his Polaroid SX-70 camera.
It was the beginning of a queer consciousness in America, but the general public wasn’t ready for it, yet. Bianchi’s Polaroids, shot between 1975 and 1983, were taken at a time when homosexuality was still illegal across the US. Soon after, the AIDs epidemic swept the country, and Bianchi’s works stayed in boxes for 30 years.
Fire Island Pines in New York, a hamlet of 600 houses lining the coast, was one of the few safe spaces for gay men in the US at the time. Former male model John B Whyte popularised the Pines as a gay destination after he acquired the Botel Pines complex in the 1960s and turned it into a gay-friendly resort.
In the halcyon days of the Pines – described by Bianchi as ‘magical’ – more than 10,000 gay men would spend the weekend there, and Bianchi was a regular, attending at events such as Whyte’s famous ‘tea dances’ and bacchanals. He was also a guest at houses, and his poolside Polaroids are some of the most captivating shots he took on Fire Island.
‘In the Pines, my dreams of being an out gay man and artist became possible.’ Bianchi says. Yet Bianchi’s respect for his subjects’ is clear – many of the images do not show their faces, protecting their identities. Instead, the focus is the gestures of sensuality, athleticism, and tenderness expressed by the body.
In 2013, Bianchi’s collection of pictures of the Pines community was published, together with a memoir. Now, the original photographs are also on public view for the first time – some four decades after they were taken – at Throckmorton Fine Art, New York, paying homage to a time and a place when queerness was the quintessence of summer.
INFORMATION
‘Fire Island Pines: Polaroids 1975-1983’ is on view until 16 September. For more information, visit the Throckmorton Fine Art website
ADDRESS
Throckmorton Fine Art
145 E 57th Street
New York
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
This year's best luxury Christmas hampers for festive celebrations
The best Christmas hampers are a classic gift for a reason: everyone loves receiving a basket of beautifully curated pantry fillers just in time for the festivities. Here are our top picks for 2024
By Rosie Conroy Published
-
17 questions for Michael Kiwanuka
As he prepares to release his fourth album 'Small Changes', we ask Michael Kiwanuka some of life's important questions
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
Inside ‘M&OTHERS’, the experimental exhibition dissecting the relationship between fashion and motherhood
A new exhibition at Modemuseum Hasselt, Belgium explores the rarely examined link between fashion and motherhood, in all its forms
By Dal Chodha Published
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next Door
The Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
By Anne Soward Published
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New York
Violet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
By Mary Cleary Published
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West
‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American West
The artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990s
New York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black men
The late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in Philadelphia
Artist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
By Hannah Silver Published
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connection
Wallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
By Charlotte Gunn Published