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TOM BIANCHI: FIRE ISLAND PINES POLAROIDS 1975-1983
(BIANCHI, TOM). Bianchi, Tom. Bologna, ITALY: Damiani Editore, 2013. Second Printing. Small 4to. Cloth in Pictorial Dust Jacket. Erotic Photography Monograph. Fine/Near Fine. 211pp, profusely illustrated in color. Designed by Tom Bianchi and Ben Smales. "In 1970, fresh out of law school, Tom Bianchi was invited to spend a weekend at Fire Island Pines, where he encountered a community of gay men. Using a Polaroid SX-70 camera, Bianchi documented his friends' lives in the Pines, amassing an image archive of people, parties and private moments. These images, published here for the first time, and accompanied by Bianchi's moving memoir of the era, record the birth and development of a new culture. Soaked in sun, sex, camaraderie and reverie, "Fire Island Pines Polaroids 1975-1983" depicts eight summers of gay life on the Long Island sandbar, and conjures a magical bygone era. "In taking the photos, my first mission was to show that boys like me knew they had a place to go, and the second was to let the world know there was nothing threatening about us". The book's subjects - shown frolicking at the beach, lazing in bed, dancing, holding each other, and hanging out in modernist beach houses - are palpably exhilarating. The sense of joy is so immersive that it's easy to forget, if just for a few minutes, the waiting epilogue that struck the gay community soon after. "The book has for me a profound emotional resonance," says the sixty-seven year-old photographer who lives in Palm Springs, but still spends several weeks every summer on Fire Island. "I'm looking at myself and many other young men who were vividly alive and celebrating their freedom for the first time. I tried to give a sense of the world we lived in. I found very strong connections between us, our style and the place - you would never attempt a community anywhere but in a place that beautiful". A most handsome example of the now-uncommon 2013 second Damiani printing that beautifully reproduces the Polaroids in facsimile. 88-6208-270-3 Inventory Number: 026848
