About Alvin Baltrop
Alvin Baltrop (1948-2004) was born in the Bronx, New York, and spent most of his life living and working in New York City. From 1969 to 1972, he served in the Vietnam War and began photographing his comrades. Upon his return, he enrolled in the School of the Visual Arts in New York, where he studied from 1973 to 1975. After working various jobs — vendor, jewelry designer, printer — he settled on the banks of Manhattan's West Side, where he would produce the bulk of his photographic output.
Powerful, lyrical, and controversial, Alvin Baltrop's photographs are a groundbreaking exploration of clandestine gay culture in New York in the 1970s and 80s. His work is reflective of the grassroots passion and raw energy of New York City’s underground gay culture. Baltrop focused his lens on the derelict warehouses beneath Manhattan's West Side piers; which was a lawless, forgotten part of the city that played host to gay cruising, art-making, drug smuggling, prostitution, and suicides. Baltrop documented this scene, unflinchingly and obsessively capturing everything from fleeting naked figures in mangled architectural environments to scenes of explicit sex and police raids on the piers. While the outside world saw New York as the glamorous playground of Studio 54, Warhol's gang, and the disco era; Baltrop photographed the city's gritty flipside. His work is an important part of both gay culture and the history of New York itself, and his photographs are a powerful tribute to a long-forgotten world at the city's dilapidated margins.
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Browse photography through Art Resource
“In the dark, we all can be free”
Alvin Baltrop
Third Streaming & The Alvin Baltrop Trust
Backer has been involved with The Alvin Baltrop Trust since 2008. In 2011, she co-curated, Alvin Baltrop: Photographs 1965-2003, with Randall Wilcox, an artist, close friend of Baltrop, and executor of the Estate. Following the exhibition at Third Streaming, we designed a legacy-planning strategy for the Trust and began organizing the artist’s archive, which was donated to The Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2014. Third Streaming placed Baltrop’s photographs in key private and public collections to establish a market for his work. Since 2016, we have partnered with Galerie Buchholz, who represents the Estate.
The Alvin Baltrop Archive at the Bronx Museum:
As The Bronx Museum of the Arts is undergoing a major renovation of its South Wing, in-person access to the archives is currently not available until the completion of the project in 2025.
Select digital access is available. Please contact curatorial@bronxmuseum.org with your specific requests. Thank you!
For research questions or to visit the archive at Third Streaming, please contact:
For sales inquiries, contact Galerie Buchholz
Peter Currie
peter@galeriebuchholz.com
