Over the past several months, a remarkable group of Alvin Baltrop’s color slides have been digitized as part of the research and archival process surrounding the forthcoming documentary film Letter to Alvin. Seeing these images together has been deeply moving.

Many of the subjects familiar from Baltrop’s black-and-white photographs are here: the West Side piers, portraits, lovers, male nudes, the Navy, and the streets of New York. But the color slides also give us a sense of the extraordinary breadth of Alvin’s observing eye and the many worlds he moved through.

There are people sunbathing and gathering on the piers, performers and performances, women marching for their reproductive rights, street scenes in Harlem, and portraits of friends and lovers. Political and social life sits alongside quiet, everyday moments. There are sunsets and city skies, and extraordinarily intimate close-ups of bodies adorned with jewelry Alvin made himself.

And there is so much style. Again and again, Alvin seems drawn to how people presented themselves: their clothes, gestures, jewelry, hair, and attitude. His portraits convey the distinct presence of his subjects, the way they inhabited themselves and the world around them.

The photographs can be moody, tender, erotic, playful, and unexpectedly lush. What has particularly struck us in going through them is Alvin’s sense of color, his ability to use it to create an atmosphere that can feel mysterious, and at times almost dreamlike.

The slides also feel, in places, more personal. Alongside photographs that clearly belong to the body of images we have come to know as Baltrop’s art are photographs of lovers, friends, travels, gatherings, and seemingly ordinary moments that caught his attention. The line between his art-making and these more informal, personal photographs is not always clear, and perhaps that is part of what makes this material so compelling. Together, the slides offer a more intimate view of Alvin’s life while complementing and expanding our understanding of his better-known photographs.

As a collection, the slides are enormously moving. They remind us how much more there is to discover about Alvin as an artist continually observing the people and world around him.

Digitizing this material is part of Third Streaming’s larger effort to preserve Alvin’s archive and make it increasingly accessible for scholarship, curatorial projects, creative research, and future engagement with his legacy.

We look forward to sharing much more from the color archive, as well as other newly digitized material, in the months ahead. Follow us on Instagram, where we’ll be sharing some of these photographs and other discoveries from the archive.

Now Live: The Soft Network Benefit Auction

We’re very pleased to be participating in the inaugural Soft Network Benefit Auction, which is live now through October 7.

One of Baltrop’s vintage prints, The Piers (two men), n.d. (1975–1986), a 10 × 8 inch silver gelatin print, is being offered as part of the auction.

View Alvin Baltrop’s photograph and bid on Artsy

The online auction brings together artists, estates, foundations, studios, and archives in support of Soft Network, an organization helping artists and those responsible for stewarding artists’ legacies. Its programs create practical structures for sharing knowledge and resources across a field in which many estates and archives operate with limited financial and institutional support.

One of those initiatives, Soft Network’s Archive-in-Residence, is a fully funded two-year collaboration with an under-resourced artist’s estate, providing support for preservation, research, organization, exhibitions, and publications. Soft Network also runs AFELL, an international community of more than 400 artists, foundation representatives, and people caring for artists’ estates who share resources and knowledge with one another.

We’re thrilled to support an organization committed to the often unseen labor of caring for artists’ archives and helping ensure that their art and histories remain accessible to future generations.

Bidding is open now through October 7.

Explore the Soft Network Benefit Auction: Auction link via Artsy

Learn more about Soft Network

Letter to Alvin

We’re also excited to share a little more about Letter to Alvin, the documentary currently in development about Alvin’s life, art, and legacy.

The film is co-directed by Göran Hugo Olsson, the internationally acclaimed Swedish documentary filmmaker behind: The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975, Concerning Violence (based on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth), That Summer, and Israel Palestine on Swedish Television 1958–1989, and Hilton Als, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and cultural critic at The New Yorker, who is making his directorial debut with the film.

Göran and Hilton bring complementary perspectives to Alvin’s life, photographs, and archive. Through Alvin’s images and story, the film also opens onto the larger social and political histories he lived through and photographed, from the civil rights and gay liberation movements to the AIDS epidemic and a rapidly changing New York City.

The film draws deeply from Alvin’s archive, and that process is already allowing us to see his photographs in new ways. The color slides featured in this newsletter were digitized as part of the research surrounding the film, bringing a largely unseen part of Alvin’s photographic life into view.

At the same time, the ongoing digitization of Alvin’s black-and-white negatives is bringing another significant part of the archive into view. With generous support from the Mellon Foundation, more than 20,000 negative frames are being digitized by Tom Powel Imaging, revealing photographs and sequences that have never been seen, as well as images previously known only through a small number of surviving vintage prints.

Among the discoveries are additional photographs Alvin made of Marsha P. Johnson, as well as images of James Baldwin, alongside many other people, places, performances, and moments in New York life. These newly digitized negatives, together with the color slides and other materials from the archive, will become part of the extraordinary body of source material available to the filmmakers as Letter to Alvin takes shape.

What emerges through both the film research and Third Streaming’s ongoing archival efforts is a fuller picture of Alvin, one that reaches beyond the remarkable photographs for which he is already known.

Letter to Alvin is being produced by Story, with Louverture Films and Third Streaming among the production partners. The project was presented at CPH:DOX Forum earlier this year where it received an enthusiastic response. There is much more ahead, and much more to discover.

We look forward to sharing more about Letter to Alvin as it continues to take shape, alongside the many discoveries still emerging from Alvin’s archive.

— Yona Backer
Director, Alvin Baltrop Archive / Third Streaming

June has always felt like Alvin’s month to me. Not just because Pride is a time to celebrate the communities he loved and documented, but because it is a season that asks us to look — really look — at history, and at who gets to be remembered in it. Alvin Baltrop spent several decades doing exactly that. Armed with a camera, he moved through the West Village streets, the Hudson River Piers, and the neighborhoods where Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were organizing, agitating and insisting on their right to exist. He was part of this world, and he knew it was worth preserving.

That instinct is being vindicated in extraordinary ways. Thanks to the generous support of the Mellon Foundation, our digitization project, carried out with great skill and care by Tom Powel Imaging, is well underway. What we are finding continues to astonish us. Until now Alvin’s work has been understood primarily through the Piers series, and for good reason: those photographs are among the most significant documents of queer life in twentieth century New York City. The archive is revealing the full breadth of that vision in ways we could not have anticipated. From his early photographs taken during his time in the Navy, to portraits, performance, and street life at the heart of the West Village and beyond, the range of what Alvin documented is far greater than even the existing vintage prints suggested. The Piers were central, but they were never the whole picture.

In this issue, you will get a glimpse of what I mean. Our colleague Vera Petukhova writes about one such discovery, a sequence of newly digitized images capturing the filming of the Village People’s “YMCA” music video in the summer of 1978, on the very streets and piers Alvin knew so well. We have one vintage print that hinted at this. The digitization has given us the full sequence, and the context that comes with it. They are exactly the kind of find that reminds us why this work matters so deeply.

The discoveries described in this issue are the result of an extraordinary collaborative effort. Archivist Erin Montanez has been leading the archival and digitization work alongside Tom Powel Imaging, helping to bring Alvin's vast body of negatives into view. Her reflection below offers a glimpse into that process and the care, ingenuity, and persistence required to preserve this remarkable archive for future generations.

We are also moving to a quarterly publishing rhythm, a commitment I am making to you as our readership continues to grow. Consistency feels important right now, as the archive enters a new phase and there is genuinely more to share. We want you with us for all of it.

As always, the Alvin Baltrop Archive welcomes artists, photographers, curators, researchers, and educators who wish to engage with the materials directly. Please note that the archive will be closed this summer as we undertake an exciting transition. We are moving from Brooklyn to a beautiful new home at Galerie Buchholz’s space in Midtown Manhattan. We look forward to welcoming you there.

To inquire about scheduling an appointment, please reach out to us at info@thirdstreaming.com.

— Yona Backer

Director, Alvin Baltrop Archive

Through Baltrop’s Lens: an Anthem Before Its’s Afterlife

A newly digitized set of negatives captures the filming of the Village People's YMCA music video on New York's West Side piers in 1978.

During a recent dive into a group of newly digitized negatives from the Alvin Baltrop Archive, I was looking through several contact sheets when a sequence of photographs caught my attention. Five men stood in formation on a New York street: a policeman, a sailor, a construction worker, a Native American, and a leather-clad biker. At first, I assumed they were simply people dressed in familiar archetypal costumes. But as I looked more closely, I realized I was looking at the Village People.

The photographs document the filming of the YMCA music video in the summer of 1978. In the background are recognizable landmarks of Manhattan’s West Side. The Underground, a popular clothing store in Greenwich Village, appears in several frames. Nearby, the awning of the Ramrod, one of New York’s most prominent leather bars, is visible. The video was filmed guerrilla-style on the streets surrounding the Ramrod and the West Side piers, locations that Alvin Baltrop knew intimately and photographed for more than a decade.

What makes these photographs compelling is the glimpse they provide into a particular moment and place. The piers were a strange mix of ruin, stage set, and social world. They attracted artists, musicians, runaways, cruisers, photographers, performers, and countless others who transformed the abandoned waterfront into a vibrant community. The Village People’s imagery and the West Side piers belonged to overlapping queer geographies of downtown Manhattan during the 1970s, and Baltrop was there documenting it all from within.

Looking at these images today, I find myself wondering what Baltrop thought as he watched the filming unfold. In 1978, the Village People were still on the verge of becoming a global phenomenon. The song YMCA had not yet become the ubiquitous cultural touchstone it is today.

Nearly fifty years later, YMCA occupies a very different place in public life. Once associated with queer nightlife and disco culture, it is now heard at weddings, sporting events, political rallies, and public celebrations. Most recently, the song re-entered public discourse through its prominent use at Donald Trump’s rallies and inauguration celebrations, a use publicly endorsed by Village People frontman Victor Willis. Notably, Willis had previously attempted to stop Trump from using the song and has more recently pushed back against characterizations of YMCA as a “gay anthem,” illustrating how contested the song’s cultural meaning remains even among those most closely associated with it. In the process, the song has accumulated meanings that would likely have been unimaginable when these photographs were taken.

This evolution calls to mind what Situationist theorist Guy Debord described as recuperation: the process through which radical or subcultural forms are absorbed into mainstream culture and repurposed within new ideological contexts. The history of YMCA offers a compelling example of how cultural symbols can drift from their origins, acquiring new meanings while becoming increasingly detached from the communities that first produced them.

We are witnessing the filming of one of the most recognizable music videos in American popular culture through Baltrop’s lens. The images place us within the world he knew intimately: the West Side piers and the communities that gathered there. Through his perspective, a cultural artifact that has since accumulated countless meanings is returned to its origins in a specific place, among specific people, at a specific moment in time.

This is what makes archives so valuable; we see the filming of the YMCA music video through the eyes of an artist whose life was deeply intertwined with the community from which it emerged. As the archive continues to uncover previously unseen materials, Baltrop’s photographs allow us to look beyond the afterlife of cultural symbols and reconnect with the communities that gave rise to them. During Pride Month especially, they remind us that cultural history is built from lived experience and preserved through those who took the time to document it.

— Vera Petukhova

Curator + Communications Consultant, Alvin Baltrop Archive

Reflections from the digitization project and collaboration with Tom Powel Imaging from archivist Erin Montanez

For the last six months, Dylan Obser at Tom Powel Imaging has been intimately involved in digitally scanning Baltrop’s negatives, which amount to 20,815 discrete frames. Working at a pace of about 500 scans per day, Obser developed a custom rig for digital capture, including a built light source and parts he 3D-printed to stabilize the camera and shift each strip of negatives from one frame to the next. Archival processing on this scale is highly labor-intensive. It is repetitive work that requires time and attention to detail.

When the Alvin Baltrop Archive first unearthed Baltrop’s negatives, cut and uncut strips were found in sleeves, envelopes, plastic baggies, and boxes. To stabilize them, Obser rehoused all of the negatives into archival sleeves and binders, assigning each frame and strip its own unique identifier. To preserve Baltrop’s system of storing multiple strips within a single sleeve, each sleeve was assigned its own identifier. This preserves the artist’s system of organization while providing a parallel structure for locating and tracking assets during the digitization process.

Each frame is digitized in linear response through Capture One software, generating a high-fidelity digital surrogate that serves as an accurate record of the original photographic negative. In cases when an image has been under or overexposed, Obser makes small adjustments so the content of the image is legible to a viewer. From a preservation mindset, the preservation of the content can be more important than the preservation of a format.

It’s sobering to think of how few prints Baltrop was able to produce in his lifetime, compared to the prolific nature of his overall artistic output. By taking steps to create access to Baltrop’s negatives, which significantly outnumber existing prints, future users will have the opportunity to encounter the full breadth of Baltrop’s subjects, environments, and the relations between them.

— Erin Montanez

Archivist, Alvin Baltrop Archive

ARCHIVE UPDATES

The Alvin Baltrop Archive is entering an exciting new chapter. This summer, the archive will relocate to Galerie Buchholz’s new space in Midtown Manhattan, creating expanded opportunities for research, preservation, and public engagement with Baltrop’s work.

We are also in the early stages of developing Letter to Alvin, a documentary project exploring Baltrop’s life, work, and enduring cultural impact. We look forward to sharing more as the project develops.

The archive is available by appointment to artists, photographers, curators, researchers, educators, and students interested in engaging directly with the collection. To schedule a visit or inquire about research access, please contact us at info@thirdstreaming.com.

Stay connected with the Alvin Baltrop Archive

Follow us on Instagram for archive discoveries, digitization updates, research highlights, and announcements: @alvin_baltrop_archive

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In times of uncertainty, celebration can become a form of resistance and a way of insisting on life, connection, and possibility. This was something Alvin Baltrop understood intuitively. In the midst of precarity and erasure, he turned his camera toward intimacy, pleasure, and collective presence, documenting not just loss, but the ways people made life, joy, and connection inside conditions meant to erase them.

As we step into a new year it is a moment that invites both reflection and renewal, we find ourselves still navigating a world in flux. In numerology, 2025 adds up to nine, signaling the end of a cycle, while 2026 brings us to one: the number of beginnings and potential. In the Chinese zodiac, we move from the Year of the Snake and a time for shedding old skins, into the Year of the Horse, which carries the energy of movement, vitality, and liberation. And in Western astrology, Pluto’s long-awaited shift from Capricorn into Aquarius echoes this same spirit of transformation: the closing of an old order and the opening of new possibilities for freedom, community, and change. Endings and beginnings intertwine and transition itself becomes a form of transformation.

This sense of transformation also resonates deeply in the world around us. We are living through an increasingly fractured political landscape, one that is marked by censorship, tightening borders, and a culture of fear and division. It is in these moments that art reminds us of its essential power: to help us look, and truly see. Alvin Baltrop’s work embodies this capacity with particular force. As both witness and participant, Baltrop made visible the lives and communities that dominant narratives sought to erase. His practice reminds us that visibility can be an act of resistance, and that seeing—honestly and unflinchingly—is itself a radical gesture.

In that spirit, I’m proud to share that Alvin Baltrop’s work is currently featured in two exhibitions that speak directly to questions of power, vision, and refusal. At MoMA, his photographs appear in Less Is Morbid, part of the museum’s Artist’s Choice series curated by Arthur Jafa. The exhibition gathers over 80 works by artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Bruce Nauman, David Hammons, Hélio Oiticica, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kerry James Marshall. Jafa frames the show through the concept of “besidedness” or the creation of unexpected relationships between works through proximity, resonance, and shared conceptual charge. Within this constellation, Alvin’s images stand as both anchor and provocation, insisting on presence within a broader cultural conversation.

Simultaneously, Alvin’s work is included in No Room. No Vacancy. at Miami’s Historic Hampton House, the only Green Book–listed museum in the country. Curated by Madeleine Haddon, Serubiri Moses, and K.O. Nnamdie, the exhibition explores refusal as a political, ethical, and spiritual stance through the work of more than 30 artists, including Theaster Gates, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kerry James Marshall. (Scroll down for more information on both exhibitions).

We’re also thrilled to share that The Bronx Museum, which houses part of the Alvin Baltrop Archive, has recently digitized Alvin’s original audio and video cassette tapes with the support of Story, the Swedish film production company I’m collaborating with on Letter to Alvin—the first documentary about Baltrop. The film is directed by Göran Hugo Olsson, an award-winning filmmaker known for his incisive works on social issues, and Hilton Als, the distinguished writer and curator who included Alvin’s work in his 2018 exhibition God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at David Zwirner Gallery and in the accompanying publication of the same name. These recordings capture Alvin’s interviews with friends and lovers, many of whom appear in his photographs, and offer a rare, intimate glimpse into the world he so fearlessly chronicled. We’ll be sharing more about Letter to Alvin in upcoming newsletters.

We’re also delighted to welcome Erin Montanez as our new Digital Archive Coordinator, where she is leading the ongoing work of organizing and activating scans as they are produced through the digitization of more than 30,000 of Alvin Baltrop’s negatives, a project generously funded by the Mellon Foundation.

As always, thank you for being part of this journey with us.

To stay connected and follow updates from the archive, please find us on Instagram @alvin_baltrop_archive.

With warmth and solidarity,

Yona Backer

Updates from the Archive: A personal reflection and update from our outgoing Archivist Randa Elsayed

I have recently been delving into a particularly compelling piece of ephemera from Baltrop’s personal archive. Before his passing, Baltrop worked on a manuscript that was ultimately assembled and finalized in 2024, the year of Baltrop’s death. The manuscript stands as both a tribute to Baltrop’s life and work and a carefully constructed narrative drawn from several portfolios of his work that he had developed. Together, these elements form a deeply personal testament to his artistic vision.

In biographical documentation reflecting on the book’s origins, Baltrop shared that his cancer had returned, and in the wake of this news he began assembling the manuscript. Following his diagnosis, Baltrop purchased an expensive pair of leather pants that he knew he did not need and could not afford, then returned home, opened a chest containing his photos, and began compiling the material to build the manuscript and reflect on his life’s work. From there, he selected, printed, and reprinted dozens of silver gelatin photographs centered on the piers, arranging them into a book woven-in with poetry gifted to him by friends.

On July 6, 2001, Baltrop registered the collection with the Library of Congress under the title Ashes From a Flame, named after a poem with the same title. He later produced several bound copies at a printer in Manhattan and sought publication, though without success.

Now, more than 25 years later, the manuscript continues to move through the hands of those close to the archive – being viewed, admired, and continually revived through the stories held within its pages. The opening image depicts Baltrop seated in his Lower East Side apartment, surrounded by his work. His shadowed gaze meets the reader as the page turns, inviting entry into his world. This is a world unlike our own, tracing the presence of the piers as sites of love, pleasure, and community.

Engaging with this manuscript has been especially meaningful as I begin to transition out of my role and pass the torch to our incoming Digital Archive Coordinator Erin Montoya. It has been both an honor and a privilege to work with Baltrop’s body of work, and I look forward to continuing to carry and sow the seeds of his legacy wherever I go.

Welcoming Erin - Digital Archive Coordinator

We’re thrilled to welcome Erin Montanez as Digital Archive Coordinator at Third Streaming. Erin brings deep experience in archival practice, digital preservation, and research support, with a particular focus on artist archives and special collections. She holds a Master of Library Science from Queens College CUNY and a BA in Art History from Bates College. In addition to her role at Third Streaming, she works as a Library Assistant at the Spitzer School of Architecture and volunteers with XFR Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving at-risk audiovisual media.

At Third Streaming, Erin will focus on stewarding the newly digitized scans from the massive project encompassing over 30,000 negatives—developing systems for access, discovery, and long-term care that will expand the visibility and research potential of Alvin Baltrop’s work.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Artist’s Choice: Arthur Jafa — Less Is Morbid
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
On view: November 19, 2025 – July 5, 2026

Alvin Baltrop’s photographs are currently on view at MoMA as part of Less Is Morbid, an exhibition drawn from the museum’s collection. The presentation brings Baltrop’s work into dialogue with more than eighty works across generations, emphasizing proximity, resonance, and shared conceptual charge.

→ View exhibition details

No Room. No Vacancy.
Historic Hampton House, Miami
On view: Through February 28, 2026

Baltrop’s work is also included in No Room. No Vacancy., an exhibition exploring refusal as a political, ethical, and spiritual stance. The exhibition is presented at the Historic Hampton House, the only Green Book–listed museum in the United States.

→ Learn more about the exhibition

FOLLOW THE ALVIN BALTROP ARCHIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

We invite you to follow the ongoing work of the archive on Instagram for updates, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and highlights from the collection. @alvin_baltrop_archive

Dear Comrades—

We are thrilled to share that Third Streaming has been awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation to digitize Alvin Baltrop’s seminal archive. Thanks to their generous support, we will be able to digitize over 30,000 negatives and contact sheets—of which less than five percent were printed during Baltrop’s lifetime. Working with Tom Powel Imaging, we will not only scan the archive at high resolution but also build a new, cloud-based database with searchable metadata, making Baltrop’s work accessible to scholars, curators, and the public for generations to come.

This project is about more than preservation; it is about visibility, recognition, and the safeguarding of cultural memory. Alvin Baltrop's photographs offer a singular record of New York’s piers, a space of community, freedom, and resistance for queer life at a time when safe havens were few. His archive also captures early Pride marches in the West Village, bearing witness to the struggles and celebrations of a movement fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights. In celebrating Pride Month, we honor Baltrop’s contribution as an artist and as a vital documentarian of our collective history.

In March, we had the pleasure of hosting a gathering at the Alvin Baltrop Archive in partnership with Soft Network. Board members, artists, legacy stewards, writers, and archivists came together for a special in-person visit. It was a powerful reminder of the community Soft Network is fostering—one rooted in collaboration, care, and the shared commitment to preserving cultural legacies.

I was also fortunate to attend a convening organized by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, with the support of the Mellon Foundation, focused on the vital work of artist legacy preservation. It was deeply inspiring to be in conversation with peers working across diverse approaches, and to feel the wisdom and generosity of elders in the field. We are grateful for the leadership and investment of both the Mellon and Joan Mitchell Foundations, who are doing so much to advance legacy work, particularly on behalf of artists who have historically been overlooked.

We are honored to be part of this growing community. Thank you for being on this journey with us—and happy Pride.

From the heart,

Yona Backer, Founder of Third Streaming

Updates From the Archive: Randa Elsayed, Archivist

Serving as the archivist for Alvin Baltrop’s photography is both a responsibility and a profound act of care. It’s a role rooted in honoring his radical vision, ensuring that the histories he so boldly documented are preserved, studied, and shared with future generations.

My time in the archive continues to be both illuminating and deeply moving. Through Baltrop’s work, I’ve not only gained a richer understanding of his life and artistic practice, but also deep insights into queer history and the untold stories of the West Side piers during a time of extraordinary courage, resilience, and creativity. As a young queer person of color, working in the archive during Pride Month felt especially meaningful. It reaffirmed how powerfully Baltrop’s work continues to resonate every day.

We’re also thrilled to welcome Adriana Dos Santos as our new Archive Intern. Adriana joins us with enthusiasm and curiosity, and we’re excited to support her as she begins this journey into the world of archival work and contributes to preserving Baltrop’s remarkable legacy.

In Honor of Pride Month

During Pride Month, we hold space for both celebration and resistance. As we honor the resilience of queer communities past and present, we also remain vigilant, recognizing the ongoing challenges to LGBTQ+ rights and the urgent need for solidarity and action. Alvin Baltrop’s work remains a beacon in these conversations as we acknowledge and realize that our pride should not be reserved to a single month.

As a Black, queer photographer working in New York City during the 1970s and 80s, Baltrop documented the overlooked and often criminalized lives of queer people living and loving along the Hudson River piers. His photographs, unvarnished, intimate, and defiant, offer a rare and vital window into underground queer life at a time when it was largely invisible to mainstream culture.

Baltrop’s images speak to the power of presence. His images, raw and deeply human, challenge the erasure of Black and queer bodies from both the art world and historical narratives. By documenting these underground spaces, Baltrop provided a visual record of resilience and community in the face of systemic neglect and the looming AIDS crisis. His work reclaims queer history from the margins, insisting that these stories, often ignored or actively erased, deserve recognition.

In doing so, Baltrop’s photography not only serves as a radical act of witnessing but also as a call for justice, demanding visibility and dignity for those who have long been pushed to society’s periphery.

This past Pride Month, and always, we proudly uplift Baltrop’s legacy and continue the work of preserving and sharing the stories he so fearlessly told.

The Hudson River Park: Then and Now

We are honored to have Alvin Baltrop’s works be a part of Hudson River Park: Then & Now, a public exhibition chronicling the transformation of Manhattan’s West Side waterfront from the 1970s to the present. Baltrop’s photographs, several of which are on view at the exhibit, document an era when the Hudson River piers were neglected by the city but vibrantly reclaimed by queer communities, artists, and unhoused people finding space to exist and find community

For Baltrop, the waterfront was both his subject and sanctuary. It was a site of intimacy, vulnerability, and resistance. His photographs are not only stunning visual records of the piers’ raw yet deteriorating beauty, but also deeply personal and political testaments to the lives and bodies that animated those spaces and the individuals and moments he wished to preserve. In a city rapidly reshaped by development, Baltrop’s work preserves a critical chapter of New York’s social and cultural history that is too often erased or overlooked.

We are honored that the Hudson River Park Trust and Hudson River Park Friends are presenting this thoughtful and timely exhibition, and for recognizing the enduring importance of artists like Alvin Baltrop, whose lens challenged dominant narratives and offered alternative views of public space. We invite the public to visit the Tribeca esplanade, between Piers 25 and 26, to engage with this powerful collection of photographs and to reflect on the layered past that continue to shape our present.

Other artists featured in the exhibit include: Carl Glassman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Irene Liberman, Darleen Rubin, Shelley Seccombe and Andreas Sterzing.

Bennington College Archive Visit

In April, Third Streaming had the pleasure of hosting students from Bennington College for an in-depth tour of the Alvin Baltrop Archive.

The group, comprised of students from a variety of artistic disciplines, engaged with Baltrop’s work firsthand, exploring vintage prints, contact sheets, slides, and rare archival materials. Together, we discussed archival methods, the importance of preserving marginalized histories, and Baltrop’s singular place in both queer and photographic canons.

A highlight of the visit was viewing an archival interview with Baltrop himself, during which he reflected on his photographs, some of which the students were holding in their hands. The footage offered a rare and intimate glimpse into his world, revealing his sharp intellect, gentle humor, and unwavering commitment to documenting truth. It was a powerful moment of connection across generations, inviting students into the living heart of the archive.

We’re always grateful for opportunities to share Baltrop’s work and legacy with students, and to foster meaningful dialogue around art, activism, and historical memory.

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Dear Friends & Colleagues,

As spring arrives—bringing renewal, growth, and new possibilities—we’re embracing this energy at Third Streaming, with exciting projects in the works that we look forward to sharing in future newsletters.

But first, we’re thrilled to invite you to a special evening with Soft Network at the home and studio of Yona Backer, founding board member of Soft Network, for an intimate tour of the Alvin Baltrop archive. Following the tour, we’ll gather nearby for a reception to celebrate recent achievements, including Soft Network’s 501(c)(3) certification. We are excited to collaborate with Soft Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and providing access to the work of vital yet often vulnerable experimental artists and those who care for them.

This ticketed fundraiser directly supports Soft Network’s mission to empower contemporary artists and those working with artist estates and archives to develop sustainable legacy models. If you’re unable to attend, please consider sponsoring an artist’s ticket or making a donation by clicking on the link below.

Event details & tickets

Alvin Baltrop (1948–2004) was a visionary photographer who captured the raw beauty and underground cultures of New York City’s Hudson River piers, Harlem, and the Bronx during the 1970s and 1980s. His work preserves the history of Black, gay New Yorkers—artists, dancers, families, activists, sex workers, and friends—whose stories remain largely overlooked in mainstream archives. At a time when the rights of LGBTQ+ communities, particularly trans people, are under renewed threat, preserving and amplifying Baltrop’s work is more important than ever. His images stand as a testament to resistance, joy, survival, and self-determination—offering an archive of lives that refuse to be erased.

Updates from Third Streaming

In the spirit of new beginnings, we’re marking a major milestone in our work on the Alvin Baltrop archive—we have nearly completed cataloging all of Baltrop’s prints into our digital database, a critical step in preserving and expanding access to his work. Up next: we turn our attention to raising support for the digitization of Baltrop’s over 30,000 negatives—of which he printed fewer than five percent during his lifetime—ensuring a more comprehensive understanding of Baltrop’s artistic practice and the breadth of his vision.

In honor of National Women’s Month, we are also celebrating the women—both cisgender and transgender—who appear throughout Baltrop’s archive. Archivist Randa Elsayed has added special selections to the From the Archive section below, highlighting the individuals who shaped and were shaped by Baltrop’s world, expanding the visibility of their stories.

With so much in motion, we look forward to sharing new projects on the horizon in upcoming newsletters. Until then, we hope to see you at the Soft Network event and look forward to continuing this journey together.

Warmly,
Yona Backer, Founder of Third Streaming

Updates From the Archive: Randa Elsayed, Archivist

No two days in the Alvin Baltrop archive are ever the same; each day brings a new discovery. Recently, I began the process of viewing CDs filled with digital slides, and upon opening the files, I was struck by the vibrancy of Baltrop’s color photography. The images unfolded on the screen in breathtaking clarity—portraits of women bathed in soft light, a striking seascape, a child standing in a sunlit room. These photographs, so distinct from Baltrop’s well-known images of the piers, are no less captivating or profound.

Through each frame, the presence of his subjects is almost palpable—their spirit, their essence, their stories shining through. These images reveal a remarkable depth and range in Baltrop’s work, expanding the narrative of his practice and the histories he so carefully documented. This discovery enriches our understanding of Baltrop’s artistic vision, revealing a broader spectrum of the lives he captured with such care. By preserving and sharing these images, we continue the vital work of documenting histories that might otherwise be overlooked, ensuring their impact endures for future generations.

In Honor of Women’s History Month

Baltrop’s images, taken in the shadows of New York’s crumbling piers, reveal an ecosystem of community, intimacy, and defiance. His photographs are more than just images; they are testaments to survival and resistance. His lens captured the lives of those often overlooked.

Just as Alvin Baltrop captured gay men finding refuge and solace on the piers, he also captured Black, trans, and queer women living, loving, and fighting for their place in a city that sought to erase them. This Women's History Month, we reflect on how his work not only chronicled history but continues to resonate as a powerful visual archive of those whose stories are still underrepresented.

The women who appear in Baltrop’s work were not simply subjects; they were pioneers of self-determination, navigating a world that denied them safety while creating spaces for joy, care, and expression. Through his lens, we see the radical beauty of their existence—a beauty that was, and remains, political. Their legacy also lives on in today’s activism and storytelling through art. Their visibility in Baltrop’s work offers a bridge between past and present, reminding us that acknowledging these histories is not just about remembrance but about action.

At Third Streaming, we honor this legacy by preserving and sharing Baltrop’s images, ensuring that the histories of these remarkable women remain seen and felt. Their presence in his archive is a reminder that they have always been here, shaping culture. This Women’s History Month, we celebrate them—not just as figures of the past, but as beacons for our future.

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Alvin Baltrop (1948–2004) was a visionary whose photography immortalized the decaying beauty of New York City’s Hudson River piers during the 1970s and 1980s. These once-abandoned structures became vibrant spaces for art, intimacy, and resistance, revealing the raw, unapologetic lives of marginalized communities. Baltrop’s lens captured moments that many overlooked or avoided, from clandestine encounters to stark urban landscapes, embodying a mix of voyeuristic curiosity and compassionate storytelling. Despite encountering systemic biases in the art world, Baltrop’s work is now celebrated for its profound social and artistic impact.

In this issue, we delve into his archive, showcasing newly discovered, never-before-seen images, and share updates on the latest news and ongoing projects that celebrate his enduring legacy.

Yona Backer, Founder of Third Streaming LLC

Updates From the Archive: Randa Elsayed, Archivist

As I have delved into our team’s most recent unboxing of Alvin Baltrop’s works, I am reminded of the sentiment offered by Maya Angelou, “If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased.”

I often find myself lost in the details of Alvin Baltrop’s life and story and even more so infatuated with the honor and grace with which he photographed the individuals he loved. These past few months have been monumental for Third Streaming’s work with the Alvin Baltrop Trust. 

We have begun to document a rich collection of never-before-seen photos from Baltrop’s life, each adding depth and nuance to the profound narrative of cherished relationships—formed and lost, friendships discovered and embraced, and lovers who shared love in all its complexity. As we navigate our day-to-day, capturing images of our own lives and preserving fleeting moments we yearn to hold, we document stories and imagine the legacies we hope to leave behind. Baltrop, without question, established a legacy to be both celebrated and remembered.

Old and New Friends

The recent discovery of new photographs has been exciting, but what is even more compelling is the wealth of handwritten notes by Baltrop that accompany many of these images. These notes include details about the subjects featured in the photos, titles of artworks, reflections on their content, and even the dating of certain pieces, allowing us to assign specific years to previously undated images. This archival breakthrough not only enhances the visual and historical narrative of Baltrop’s oeuvre but also offers invaluable context and insight into his life and creative process.

These notes offer a glimpse into Baltrop’s personal world, deepening our understanding of the social, cultural, and personal influences that shaped his art. They enrich the historical record of Black and Queer experiences during a transformative era, shedding light on stories that are often overlooked. Preserving and studying these materials is essential to honoring Baltrop’s legacy and ensuring his unique perspective is acknowledged within the broader canon of photography and cultural history.

The photos showcased above include a rare instance where Baltrop paused to photograph a female couple, capturing a moment that markedly contrasts with his usual subjects. The second photograph captures the back of a photograph signed by fellow photographer Yvon Baumann, expressing gratitude to Baltrop for his good company and conversation during her time in New York City.

Recent Exhibitions

Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology Along the Hudson River | Wallach Art Gallery | October 5, 2024 - January 12, 2025

The Wallach Art Gallery’s Exhibit “Shifting Shorelines” combined historic and contemporary art and visual culture to explore the human, commercial, and industrial history along the Hudson River. It showcased the river’s unique features alongside docks, factories, and buildings alongside contrasting images which reveal cycles of exploitation and reclamation. The exhibition included images by Every Ocean Hughes and Gordon Matta-Clark alongside Alvin Baltrop’s photographs.

By contrasting idealized images of the river as a natural paradise with depictions of exploitation and environmental harm, the exhibition challenges traditional art historical narratives that often prioritize white male artists. It aimed to present a richer, more nuanced perspective on the river's legacy, life, and livelihoods by including the voices and experiences of diverse creators.

Baltrop’s works—featured above—were included in the exhibition to shed light on the lesser-discussed aspects of queer life on the Hudson River, offering deeper insights into the culture of the piers. Baltrop’s photographs, alongside works by Every Ocean Hughes and Gordon Matta-Clark, tell a story of the piers over time, highlighting their rich cultural history and its significance in the present day.

Spotlighting

God made my face, Hilton Als

Alvin Baltrop is featured in the book God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin as an artist whose work aligns with the themes Baldwin explored throughout his life, particularly those of queerness and identity. Baltrop’s silver gelatin prints, which document the gay cruising scenes at New York City's piers, echo Baldwin’s contemplations on sexuality and the complexities of human relationships.

The book stems from a 2019 exhibition curated by Hilton Als at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York. It includes reproductions of select artworks from the exhibition, accompanied by illuninating essays from Als, critic Teju Cole, filmmaker Barry Jenkins, novelist Jamaica Kincaid, and others.

Highlighting artworks that engage with Baldwin’s multifaceted identity, the book offers a nuanced portrait of Baldwin and his enduring influence on contemporary artists. The publication celebrates the profound ways Baldwin has both influenced and been influenced by the cultural and artistic contexts around him.

ANOHNI and The Johnsons

My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross —

ANOHNI’s sixth studio album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, offers a deeply personal yet expansive reflection on themes of loss, inequality, alienation, and environmental devastation, while also exploring possibilities for societal and spiritual transformation. ANOHNI speaks of creating music that strengthens and comforts those on the front lines of activism, helping listeners discover connection and resilience in a fragmented world.

The album’s connection to queerness is powerfully conveyed through its cover art; a photograph of Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop reflecting ANOHNI’s long-standing relationship with Johnson’s memory and her continued exploration of identity, community, and justice.

Baltrop’s work, which frequently captured overlooked queer lives, aligns with ANOHNI’s intent to create art that is both intimate and transformative. Accompanied by the statement, “It’s time to feel what’s really happening,” the album represents a moment of artistic ingenuity for ANOHNI, as she skillfully balances raw emotional intensity with a commitment to helping others navigate today’s challenges with dignity and hope.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward: Building a Legacy with Community Support

Looking Back

Thirteen years after Alvin Baltrop's first solo exhibition at Third Streaming in 2011, his work continues to gain recognition. Best known for vividly capturing New York City’s waterfront subcultures, Baltrop’s photographs showcase the urban decay and the vibrant lives of the LGBTQIA+ communities and others living at the margins of society from the late 1960s-80s. The exposure began with Douglas Crimp’s 2008 Artforum article when one of Baltrop’s iconic images landed on the cover of the magazine. It was further boosted by Baltrop’s first museum survey in 2012, "Alvin Baltrop: Dreams into Glass," curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, and the publication that accompanied it.  These milestones led to additional opportunities and critical support from a community of dedicated artists, curators, writers, and collectors who recognized the value of the work. And, ultimately to representation by Galerie Buchholz, one of the most relevant contemporary art galleries globally.

Looking Forward

We are now embarking on a major legacy project to digitize over forty thousand of Baltrop’s negatives, including many previously unseen images. This effort, in collaboration with Tom Powell Imaging, industry experts in digital archival image capture and production, will preserve and make Baltrop’s work accessible for research, licensing, and more. You can support this project by purchasing items from the ALTU x Alvin Baltrop limited edition capsule—scroll down for more info. Your contribution will directly aid in the preservation and accessibility of Baltrop’s impactful legacy. Without your support, we wouldn’t have reached so many major milestones. There is still so much more to do.

With gratitude,

Yona Backer

Creating Impact: Artist Legacies in the 21st Century

In March, Yona Backer joined Anthony Huberman, Director of Giorno Poetry Systems, Kéwé Lô, Director of Kehinde Wiley’s organization Black Rock Senegal, and Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation for a panel discussion moderated by James Bewley, Senior Program Officer at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, at the Hammer Museum.

You can watch a recording of the panel to hear more about the behind-the-scenes operations and planning of the Alvin Baltrop archive.

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ALTU x Alvin Baltrop Collaboration

Our collaboration with Joseph Altuzarra’s genderful brand, ALTU, launched last winter, supports the Alvin Baltrop Digitization Project. A select number of pieces from the ALTU x Alvin Baltrop Capsule are available for sale through Third Streaming. They include limited edition hooded sweatshirts and logo T-shirts with printed artwork by Alvin Baltrop. Proceeds will be allocated towards the preservation of the artist’s negatives. The logo T-shirts are available at $95 and hoodies at $250, plus tax and shipping. Each piece features a large print of Baltrop’s work and custom embroidered ALTU logo on high-quality cotton (sourced sustainably).

If you would like to purchase any of these iconic pieces to your collection, please email us at info@thirdstreaming.com.

Upcoming Exhibitions

Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology Along the Hudson River | Wallach Art Gallery | Opens October 4, 2024

Shifting Shorelines actively engages in a critical dialogue with images of the river as a natural paradise by showing these seemingly hegemonic portrayals alongside contrasting representations that consider the exploitation and environmental damage to the river that has accompanied many of the human endeavors along its shores. In so doing it offers a counter reading of the received art historical narratives—narratives overwhelmingly grounded on the work of white male artists—that aims for a rich and complex understanding of the legacy, life, and livelihoods along the river informed by the voices and experiences of a broad range of creators. 

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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

Launched this winter, our collaboration with Joseph Altuzarra’s genderful brand, ALTU, supported the Alvin Baltrop legacy projects with essential funds for digitizing Baltrop’s negatives. This Pride month, we’re teaming up again and offering you an exclusive first look at the 50% off sale on this limited-edition collection.

Each purchase funds our work to tell queer history, celebrate queer art, and honor Alvin Baltrop and his communities. Use the code AltuxAB50 today to order a limited-edition piece from the collection at 50% off.

View the collection

Thank you for your support. If you’d like to champion our archival efforts in other ways, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@thirdstreaming.com. We look forward to sharing the fruits of this labor of love with you all soon.

With Heart,

Yona Backer

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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

Every month is pride month as far as the Alvin Baltrop archive—which so tenderly and unapologetically chronicles the struggles, triumphs, and loves of LGBTQ+ people in 1970s-80s New York—is concerned. Yet we gladly embrace the month of queer celebration to reflect on the legacies of those who fought for liberation before us, like Baltrop and the revolutionary transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson whom he photographed. Pride month also reminds us that we must continue this fight to protect queer health, joy, and art. At Third Streaming, we join the movement by researching, preserving, and sharing the photographs, ideas, and histories that Alvin Baltrop generously gifted us during his lifetime.

Our collection includes hundreds of never-before-seen negatives that Tom Powel Imaging is currently digitizing. This project is crucial for preserving Baltrop’s legacy, and we are raising funds to cover the completion of it. Launched this winter, our collaboration with Joseph Altuzarra’s genderful brand, ALTU, supported the Alvin Baltrop legacy projects. We are delighted to team up with the ALTU again this Pride month and offer you an exclusive first look at the 50% off sale on this limited-edition collection.

Each purchase funds our work to tell queer history, celebrate queer art, and honor Alvin Baltrop and his communities.

Thank you for your continuous support. As always, we welcome scholars, curators, artists, and writers to visit our archive and library in Brooklyn to join us in our mission of bringing Baltrop’s work to life today. Contact us at info@thirdstreaming.com to schedule a time to view the materials.

With Heart,

Yona Backer

Upcoming Exhibitions

The First Finger (chapter II)

June 23, 2023 – September 24, 2023 | Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

“Tolia Astakhishvili (*1974 in Tbilisi, Georgia) transforms the Haus am Waldsee with an expansive installation that constitutes her solo exhibition The First Finger (chapter II). In addition to structural interventions, drawings, paintings, text, and videos, the exhibition includes new collaborative works with Zurab Astakhishvili, Dylan Peirce, and James Richards, as well as contributions by Antonin Artaud, Alvin Baltrop, Kirsty Bell, Nat Marcus, Vera Palme, Andreas Rousounelis, Judith Scott, Ser Serpas, and Giorgi Zhorzholiani."

Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry and Ecology Along the Hudson River

October 2024 – January 2025 | Wallach Art Gallery, New York

“Shifting Shorelines brings together historic and contemporary art, visual culture, and
environmental science to engage the history of human existence, commerce, and industry along the Hudson estuary. Focusing on the river’s edges from Albany southward to its flow into the Atlantic Ocean, the exhibition foregrounds the impact of local industry on the natural environment, highlighting the history of the river's distinctive ecological features such as brackish and salt marshes, mudflats, and beaches, along with the docks, factories, and buildings that crowded them out. Through visual and material evidence, Shifting Shorelines demonstrates the various cycles of exploitation, damage, and reclamation.”

In the News

Why art, design—and even body image—are deflating, Fast Company

“The work of Alvin Baltrop can be read, Halberstam argues, as an eroticization of ‘unbuilding.’ In images of ruin and sex, Baltrop presents a new form of masculinity and a new type of beauty, one that resists the capitalist model of boom or bust, rise and fall. ‘One of the things I was trying to say about Alvin Baltrop is that he was offering another side to masculinity that wasn’t about erection, but deflation,’ Halberstam adds.”

LAST ACT: Every Ocean Hughes’s art of dying, ArtForum

“In the foyer outside the theater, a series of Hughes’s black-and-white photographs showed the rotting pilings in the Hudson. Its piers once acted as a gathering place for queer people, particularly during the 1980s, when many of those gatherers died from AIDS, deaths neglected by the state. As sites like Little Island develop the old waterfront into tourist-friendly real estate, Hughes draws our attention to the remaining wooden pilings, makeshift burial markers for vanished communities that some would prefer stay forgotten.”

ANOHNI and the Johnsons Are Back With a New Video Starring Munroe Bergdorf, Them

“The forthcoming album cover features an Alvin Baltrop photo of LGBTQ+ activist and New York City icon Marsha P. Johnson, a fitting choice given that ANOHNI herself co-founded the radical East Village queer art collective Blacklips Performance Cult in the 1990s.”

New York: Queer Love on the West Side Piers, Blind Magazine

“Majestic in scale, the slow destruction of the West Side Piers transformed them into a theatrical space rife with intrigue, mystery, spectacle, and romance. Like his contemporaries, Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Alvin Baltrop, Stellar was drawn to the Piers as a space for possibility, freedom, and experimentation — a sensibility that spoke to artists and libertines in equal part.”

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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

Recently our team opened a blue plastic storage container, perhaps the final parcel of Alvin Baltrop’s materials, and began organizing, researching, and inventorying its contents. Portraits of familiar faces inside the box added more depth to our existing knowledge of Baltrop’s life and work. Vintage prints of dance performances in the 1970s confirmed, tangibly, what we had been told about Baltrop’s involvement in the experimental scene. A few prints coated in chemical treatments shed new light on how Baltrop developed his techniques through experimentation. From spools of film to correspondences, each artifact builds a more luminous legacy of Alvin Baltrop.

Ensuring that the materials are properly preserved and archived is our duty, and we are working in several areas to accomplish this. As our team processes the new materials, we are sharing our research on social media to enliven Baltrop in contemporary conversation and expand awareness of his work to adjacent creators. Our collection also includes hundreds of never-before-seen negatives that Tom Powel Imaging is currently digitizing. This project is crucial for preserving Baltrop’s legacy, and we are raising funds to cover the completion of it. Proceeds from our collaboration with Joseph Altuzarra’s genderful brand, ALTU, will support the Alvin Baltrop legacy projects.

We welcome scholars, curators, artists, and writers to visit our archive and library in Brooklyn during this exciting time of expansion. Contact us at info@thirdstreaming.com to schedule a time to view the materials.

With Heart,

Yona Backer

Recent and Current Exhibitions

BACK

January 12, 2023 – February 25, 2023 | Peter Freeman, Inc.

“Spanning more than 50 years, from Pop Art to the present, each work brings the back to the forefront, as in Roy Lichtenstein’s self-referential 1968 Stretcher Frame with Vertical Bar, a trompe l’oeil depiction of the back of the same painting… An undated 1970s photograph by Alvin Baltrop of the back of a man’s head leaves identity and the relationship to both photographer and viewer ambiguous. Baltrop’s images were often taken at the West Side Piers in Manhattan, a longtime clandestine cruising site, and routinely capture people looking elsewhere or engaged with others in a manner that draws the viewer’s attention beyond the frame of the image."

Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Side

January 14, 2023 - April 2, 2023 | The Whitney Museum of American Art

“Featured alongside the performances and video is The Piers Untitled (2009–23), a photographic series that captures the piers on the west side of Manhattan as an unmarked memorial to the marginalized communities and underground cultures that once occupied this unregulated waterfront.”

Our library includes West Street, pictured above, a gorgeous art book of photography by Alvin Baltrop alongside Every Ocean Hughes’ (formerly known as Emily Roysdon) piers photography and poetry, published by Printed Matter in 2010.

God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin

February 24, 2023 – July 9, 2023 | Mead Art Museum, Amherst

A special iteration of God Made My Face, originally organized by Hilton Als for David Zwirner Gallery in 2019, explores the life, work, and legacy of James Baldwin (1924–1987) through works from Alvin Baltrop, Richard Avedon, Marlene Dumas, and Kara Walker, among other iconic artists, as well as archival materials.

“Baldwin’s ways of seeing and being evolved through his relationships and exposure to the work of visual artists, during an era when the harsh realities of racial oppression were confronted with aesthetics emphasizing self-love, pride, and validation. God Made My Face explores Baldwin through his words, relationships, and the works of other artists produced during his own lifetime and today.” 

From the Archive

Street Culture: Alvin Baltrop in Harlem

Baltrop’s photographs of the Westside piers exude a sense of belonging that translates brilliantly to the joys he captured on streets across Manhattan. Though lesser known, these rare color photographs taken by Baltrop in Harlem celebrate community and daily life with a similar love and belonging that the photographer brought to the diverse communities of abandoned Chelsea warehouses. Baltrop shows his art of being an insider with this series highlighting Black community and culture as seen on the city streets.

In the News

Joseph Altuzarra Wants You to Know Alvin Baltrop, Interview Magazine

“I think queer artists have always, for a large part, been either unrecognized or recognized posthumously,” says the designer. “I really feel strongly that those works should be celebrated and should be preserved.”

The New York Waterfront’s Unsung Queer History, Surface Magazine

“The oceanic interracial, same-sex commitment ceremonies and mutual sperm oil massages of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; the port town bloodlust of Jean Genet’s Querelle of Brest; the horny archeology of Alvin Baltrop’s cruisy pier photography; Arthur Russell proofing mixes of his ecstatic disco anthems while staring at waves from the Staten Island Ferry. The waterfront has been queer territory for centuries.”

Joseph Altuzarra’s Altu is Telling Gay Stories, Starting by Collaborating With the Photographer Alvin Baltrop’s Estate, Vogue

“These scenes are intrinsic to the gay sex and cruising culture of the time, and while their tenderness and raw sensuality and eroticism are evident to most, they are specifically poignant to gay and queer folks.”

ALTU x Alvin Baltrop Collection, PAPER

“So for his first capsule collection for his genderful label ALTU, the designer paid tribute to the late visionary with pieces that memorialize Baltrop's work — known for his Piers series and portrayal of underground and queer '70s and '80s New York culture.”

Manhattan's 70s Pier cruising culture with Alvin Baltrop, Justsmile Magazine

“‘Part historical, part autobiographical, his photographs brim with raw sensuality and eroticism, yet are also full of tenderness and love,’ said Altuzarra.'“

ALTU x Alvin Baltrop Celebrate New York City's Queer Culture, Office Magazine

“This capsule highlights some of Baltrop's lesser-known and remarkable images. Erotic nudes and subversive city scenes can be seen throughout the collection.”

Osa Atoe Picks Her Bandcamp Favorites, Bandcamp

“Non-musicians, such as the photographer Alvin Baltrop, who chronicled queer life on New York’s West Side Piers in the 1970s and ’80s, also appeared in the pages of the zine, connecting to larger themes of visibility and empowerment.”

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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

Altu x Alvin Baltrop Photo: Ryan McGinley / Courtesy of Altu

December 19, 2022

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

I am thrilled to announce our very first fashion collaboration between Third Streaming and ALTU, Joseph Altuzarra’s genderful fashion brand which launched during the pandemic. The Altu x Alvin Baltrop capsule — which ‘dropped’ last week — is a collection of limited edition, high quality fashion staples including cropped leather jackets, oversized leather pants, hoodies, and soft crewnecks featuring Alvin Baltrop’s unflinching and poetic images. Proceeds from the sale of this capsule will be allocated towards crucial legacy projects, such as the preservation of thousands of negatives of mostly never-before-seen images.

Photographed by artist Ryan McGinley and modeled by actor Isaac Cole Powell, we invite you to check out the ALTU x Alvin Baltrop collection at altu.world/ and read our exclusive press coverage at Vogue. Learn more about the work of Alvin Baltrop featured in this collaboration by following our recent posts on Instagram.

Alvin Baltrop’s work continues to inspire artists across genres and disciplines, evidenced by the exhibitions and news coverage also included in this month’s newsletter.  From Hilton Als’s dedication to James Baldwin to the Black punk scene of Shotgun Seamstress, Baltrop’s work clearly transcends categorizations and speaks to a search for authenticity and liberation that continues to resonate today. In our next newsletter will be highlighting select licensing projects that demonstrate the exciting range and scope of artistic outputs by a diverse group of creatives, all inspired by Alvin Baltrop.

Looking back on our accomplishments over the past year and looking forward to the plans for next year, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for you all. Thank you for helping us to champion a brilliant artist, who was deeply connected to his community during his lifetime and now deeply connected to ours. I wish you a joyous season, and I am eager to continue building with you in the new year.

With Heart,

Yona Backer

Upcoming Events and Exhibitions

Altu x Alvin Baltrop Capsule Collection

Read more in Vogue | Available exclusively at altu.world/

For its first ever capsule, ALTU is honored to present ALTU x Alvin Baltrop, a limited edition collaboration memorializing the iconic work of the late Bronx-born photographer. This visionary ALTU x Alvin Baltrop capsule partnership highlights some of Baltrop’s more surprising and lesser known images, featuring quietly erotic nudes and subversive city scenes in black and white and little-before-seen color photography. A hand stretches out in the shadows, luminously lit at the fingertips, while the smooth indent of a curved spine is bathed in red light. In a city scene, a lone motorcycle is mounted on the grill of a truck cruising the empty streets of the West Side. Baltrop records not only the marginalized, but also the physical margins of the city where they take refuge—a hidden, and now lost, New York.

“I discovered Alvin Baltrop’s work a little over ten years ago, and was struck then, as I am now, by the poignancy and power of his work. Part historical, part autobiographical, his photographs brim with raw sensuality and eroticism, yet are also full of tenderness and love. They are deeply touching and affecting, and I am so honored to celebrate Alvin Baltrop’s work in this special collection.”

— Joseph Altuzarra

Proceeds from the ALTU x Alvin Baltrop collection will help fund the preservation and digitization of Baltrop’s brilliant archive, making the unseen seen, bringing the shadows to light.

View the Collection

God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin

February 24, 2023 – July 9, 2023 | Mead Art Museum, Amherst

A special iteration of God Made My Face, originally organized by Hilton Als for David Zwirner Gallery in 2019, explores the life, work, and legacy of James Baldwin (1924–1987) through works from Alvin Baltrop, Richard Avedon, Marlene Dumas, and Kara Walker, among other iconic artists, as well as archival materials.

“Baldwin’s ways of seeing and being evolved through his relationships and exposure to the work of visual artists, during an era when the harsh realities of racial oppression were confronted with aesthetics emphasizing self-love, pride, and validation. God Made My Face explores Baldwin through his words, relationships, and the works of other artists produced during his own lifetime and today.” 

A Recent Look Back

Art Cologne

November 16, 2022 – November 21, 2022 | Koelnmesse, Cologne, Hall 11.2, Booth B-119

Art Basel Miami Beach

December 1, 2022 – December 3, 2022 | Miami Beach Convention Center

In the News

The US National Book Awards: Celebrating the Winners, Publishing Perspectives

Poet and National Book Award winner, John Keene, talks about Alvin Baltrop in his acceptance speech.

‘All you have to do is participate’: how the Shotgun Seamstress zine made space for Black punks, The Guardian

“Davis would tell me about Alvin Baltrop, the New York photographer, and I’d interview him. Travelling and touring made the zine what it was.”

Emily Wells and the Art of Acting Up, The Line of Best Fit

“I just loved the photo so much,” she says. “Presumably it’s a gay man enjoying a moment alone at the piers, and I loved that sense of freedom in his aloneness.”

Paris+ par Art Basel : 8 stands à visiter absolument, Numero

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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

It has been awhile since our last newsletter and much has happened in the interim that I am eager to share with you. We have accomplished major milestones in our preservation of Alvin Baltrop’s work and championship of his legacy.

Over the years, we received hundreds of vintage prints and, most recently, thousands of Alvin Baltrop’s negatives from the Trust. They came to us in torn envelopes and old shopping bags, which we transferred to archival and climate-controlled storage. Nothing from the collection had ever been archived or catalogued, nor was there a database or inventory system in place. Now the entire collection of vintage prints has been properly catalogued and annotated. And, we are in the process of digitizing the over 40,000 negatives of mostly never-before-seen images. This work is being done by Tom Powell Imaging. All of these initiatives support the ongoing preservation and legacy of Baltrop’s oeuvre as well as enable curators, scholars, and artists inspired by his work to build on the research and critical interpretation of Baltrop’s legacy.

Further, I am thrilled to announce that Lana Pochiro and Randa Elsayed have joined our team. They have been cataloguing and digitizing the vintage prints, as well as the publications and articles that have been published to date, with the goal of making all this rich material accessible to the public.

Represented by Galerie Buchholz, one of the most prestigious contemporary art galleries in the world, and as a member of the Aspen Institute’s Artist Endowed Foundation Initiative, we have formed important partnerships to help promote Alvin Baltrop’s work and make it accessible to an ever-expanding global audience.

Baltrop’s photographs have been included in many key exhibitions around the globe and recently acquired by the Getty Museum and UCLA’s Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as well as the National Museum of Art in Oslo, Norway, among other internationally recognized institutions. We are working with Art Resources and Artists Rights Society on licensing projects, including designs with the poet John Keene and musicians Emily Wells and Anohni. With Skira, we co-published, The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop, a seminal publication featuring over 120 images—edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa with critical essays by Douglas Crimp, Adrienne Edwards, Allen Frame and Mia Kang.

As always, thank you for your support and interest in Alvin Baltrop’s work. We invite you to join us in the events highlighted below. Alvin Baltrop’s legacy centers all that we do, and we are excited to share more news with you soon.

Sincerely,

Yona Backer

Current and Upcoming Events

Art Cologne

November 16, 2022 – November 21, 2022 | Koelnmesse, Cologne, Hall 11.2, Booth B-119

Art Basel Miami Beach

December 1, 2022 – December 3, 2022 | Miami Beach Convention Center

Alvin Baltrop, Untitled [from The Piers series], n.d. (1975-86), gelatin silver prints. Courtesy of the Alvin Baltrop Trust Ⓒ 2010, Third Streaming, New York and Galerie Buchholz. Photo: Kilian Bannwart

A Look Back on the Year

Bells

September 24, 2022 - October 29, 2022 | Galerie Buchholz, Köln

View the work of Alvin Baltrop, included alongside Lutz Bacher, Romare Bearden, Matt Browning, Charles Burchfield, Caleb Considine, Michaela Eichwald, Julian Göthe, Samuel Jeffery, Sergej Jensen, Klein, Tonio Kröner, Mark Leckey, Norman Lewis, Diego Marcon, Jasper Marsalis, Henrik Olesen, Vera Palme, Jack Smith, Josef Strau, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stewart Uoo, Alice Valenti, Martin Wong.

Gazed and Confused

January 21, 2022 - March 12, 2022 | Last Tango, Zurich

“Exactly fifty years ago in January 1972 the BBC series Ways of Seeing was aired. In the second episode ‘Women and Art’ author and artist John Berger examined the male gaze in western visual culture, be it traditional painting or advertising. Before its widespread use in feminist theory Berger used the term of the male gaze to critique how the gaze was inextricably linked to power. He spoke of women watching themselves being looked at. Soon after in 1975 feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ spoke of to-be-looked-at-ness and Freud’s scopophilia addressing female sexual objectification in traditional cinema. Taking this as a starting point, Gazed and Confused is an exhibition in two chapters that tackles the complex, broad and challenging topic of the gaze. It brings together a multifaceted look at the gaze and explores themes such as gaze agency, the imperial gaze, the homosexual gaze, the artist’s gaze, sexism, and voyeurism.” (Read more here)

Alvin Baltrop

December 1, 2021 - January 22, 2022 | Modern Art, London

“But pleasure and the sensuality of bodies are countered with scenes of poverty, destitution and even death, pictured for instance, in a group of police officers surrounding a washed up corpse, or a young man in a tent, perhaps homeless. A significant historical document into a period of New York’s cultural subcultural and political history, the piers photographs are also glimpses into moments of intimacy and community made visible through Baltrop’s artistic conviction, vision and rigor.”

Courtesy of the Alvin Baltrop Trust Ⓒ 2010, Third Streaming, New York and Galerie Buchholz

In the News

The New, New Black Gay Renaissance, Literary Hub

Kapp Kapp on Alvin Baltrop, Interview Magazine

Instagram • Twitter • Facebook

For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

On Being by Krista Tippet—one of our favorite podcasts, recently featured an interview with Jericho Brown, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and writer. During their conversation, Tippet talked about the fragility of hope, emphasizing how hard it is to know what one can do to make a difference when there is so much we want to change in our world. Brown’s response was pure poetry…..   

Hope is always accompanied by the imagination, the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope.  Only a creative people can wield it.

—Jericho Brown, poet and writer

AN INVITATION TO ATTEND A 3-DAY EVENT EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF CITIES

THE NEW CITY: NAVIGATING THE FUTURE, A HOW-TO
A VIRTUAL 3-DAY CONFERENCE 
Thursday, 12/3 - Saturday, 12/5

A chance to deeply re-imagine what our urban spaces might be – for now, and for the future.

What Is The City You Dream Of?

We have been working for the last year with 2020 Visions to help produce, The New City, an incredible experience we are bringing to you this week. The prompt and provocation is what is the city you dream of? This partnership that also includes Union Theological is a 3-day exploration into art, culture, urban planning and the future with featured speakers including Andrew Yang, Sir David Adjaye, Matthew Ryder, Dror, Karenna Gore, and Serene Jones 

Unlike probably most "virtual conferences" you have attended, the experience is happening on multiple platforms. 

• There are highly produced panels and talks which require a ticket. Many are free with a few premium tickets for sale. 

• We are bringing together participants in Topia, a platform that is uniquely designed for social interactivity and the imagination 

• For an ongoing exploration into 2020 Visions, we have a membership community at Mighty Networks. 

Would love to see you. Come check out the grand finale with DJ James Andrews. 
Check out the full program here

Click here to register for the conference

2020VISIONS is dedicated to harnessing the artistic imagination to create new models and new paradigms for society. 

ALVIN BALTROP 

Hannah Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles presents Alvin Baltrop—a selection of works by the groundbreaking New York photographer. Alvin Baltrop brings together an array of black-and-white images that together compose a remarkable portrait of Manhattan’s west piers from the mid 1970s through the mid 1980s. Read more.  

On view until January 23, 2021. Check out the exhibition online.  

For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.  

“In contrast, even the most explicit of Baltrop’s photographs offer themselves as a space of exploration and discovery in which the viewer, rather than being compelled to behold the subject in purely aesthetic terms, is invited to share in what might be described as the pensive equanimity of the artist’s outlook.” Francesco Gagliardi, The Brooklyn Rail 

THROWBACK

Looking back to The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, an exhibition of rarely seen film stills and footage taken by Swedish reporters traveling across the US during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights era.  Presented in 2011 at our Soho space in conjunction with Louverture Films, producer of The Black Power Mixtape documentary.  Please check out the playlist—created specifically for the show—by DJ Greg Caz on Spotify.  Click through to listen. 

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