"Once Upon A Time In America..."

The Photography of Alvin Jerome Baltrop

Baltrop (1948 - 2004) was famous for portraying the marginal world of West Side New York City in the mid-1970s.  His photography documented the societally enforced subculture environment of male homosexuality, prostitution, drug trafficking and illicit sex that existed at that time.

The documentary value of his photographs has been compared to that of André Kertész or Merry Alpern, and from a stylistic point of view, is defined as an idiosyncratic hybrid between Classicism and Black Cine.

The raw uncomfortable topics Baltrop chose to photograph earned him rejection from the most important art galleries of the time, including those dedicated to gay art. 

In 2003 he was the Louis Comfort Tiffany candidate prize winner, yet the recognition of his artistic talent only came posthumously. Today, the Whitney Museum of American Art includes works of Baltrop in its collection.

The photos here represent a slice of gay life from the early 1970s after Stonewall through the early 1980s before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis.  During this period the gay subculture experienced increasing freedom and openness while still being oppressed and marginalized by the mainstream.  It was during this era that Baltrop became fascinated with the gay scene to be found at the abandoned docks and warehouses of New York City's west side.

These are the images that captured stark and grim, and sometimes happily free realities for some gay men once upon a time in America.

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"Fear Eats the Soul"