CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/22/2017

Tom Bianchi's 70s photos of the Gay Community in Fire Island Pines

Featured image is reproduced from Tom Bianchi: Fire Island Pines, Polaroids 1975-1983, the evergreen book of all gay summertime Polaroid books. “I took my camera to the Pines and started making photographs of our life there,” Bianchi writes. “In those days, many of us with Pines beach houses and jobs in New York felt the need to lie about where we’d gotten our tans. “I was at the beach on Long Island,” gave us about 120 miles of heterosexual beach as cover. The story of the Pines was compelling, but because so many of us lived in the closet, photographs posed a threat. They could be used against us. Jobs could be lost. And worse.”