Stellar has photographed gay men in New York City for just over 45 years., but this particular body of work that he shot between 1976 -1983 is a powerful documentation of a very crucial part of queer history. Since that period the piers have almost been enshrined and ideologized in people’s vivid imaginations, but Stellar captured its reality 

“It’s a show about three gay piers,” Stellar explains. “They were immense, abandoned, shed-like buildings. It was a hostile world. In the city, gay men could only meet at night, in the dark, in clubs or in bars. The piers were free. You could take off your clothes and lay in the sun, nude, with other guys looking for sex, right in Manhattan. And the police didn’t care. It was safe. We became a city within a city, and it was based on freedom and sunlight. There was nowhere else we could have done that. None.”

The work, above all, is a testament to the ways in which gay men lived “Being gay also means being human,” Stellar concludes. “And I’m really good at that part. There’s not much documentation of gay men’s lives. How do we do that? How did they live? What happened to them? Were they happy? That, coming from that time in my chronology, I wanted it. I wanted it all.” 

Stanley Stellar: The Piers opens on 15th January at Kapp Kapp, 86 Walker Street, NY.