Alvin Baltrop Authentic Estate Stamped Photographs
Here are the available photographs by Alvin Baltrop, as presented by the trustee of the Baltrop Estate, when I met with him in New York to previw the photgraphs.
Please contact me for any inquiries.
Available Photographs for Sale / Authentification & Provenance available upon request.
Letter of authentification is available from the trustee, upon request, & purchase.
USD$8000 each
All photographs have the “Alvin Baltrop” estate ink stamp on the verso.
“After meeting Al in the late 1990s, I volunteered to work as his Assistant, a position I held until his untimely death on February 1st, 2004. In accordance with his Will, I was appointed a Trustee of The Alvin Baltrop Trust.
From 2001 to 2003, Al gave me a few prints for the archival services I provided. None of these prints have been exhibited.”
From 2004 to 2011, the trustee handled all transactions regarding articles, exhibitions and sales of Alvin Baltrop work. The most important were providing Douglas Crimp with information and images for his 2008 Artforum article, a sale to The Whitney in the same year, assisting Douglas and Lynne Cooke with their exhibition “Mixed Use, Manhattan” at the Reina Sophia (Madrid, Spain), co-curating the first Baltrop retrospective at Third Streaming’s gallery in 2011 (New York, USA), and working with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston for Baltrop’s second retrospective in 2012″.
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.
PRESS:
http://www.thirdstreaming.com/alvin-baltrop-trust
https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/alvin-baltrops-documentary-intimacy
https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202104/alvin-baltrop-85276
https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/76726/Alvin-Baltrop-The-Piers-man-from-behind
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/alvin-baltrop-bronx-museum
https://www.artrabbit.com/events/alvin-baltrop-modern-art
https://www.artbook.com/blog-alvin-baltrop-piers-2020.html
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/west-side-piers-when-they-were-naked-and-gay.html
Beyond the Studio & Out of the Closet: Art and Sex on the Waterfront, 1971-83
Perspectives 179: Alvin Baltrop: Dreams Into Glass
Recalling sexual politics on the piers