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Fink Self Portrait in Mirror with Camera to Eye 1979 e1512965048108
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Leonard Fink, Self-Portrait in the Mirror with Camera to the Eye, 1979. Copyright the LGBT Community Center National History Archive.

OUT FOR THE CAMERA: The Self-Portraits of Leonard Fink

Jan 24, 2018 - Aug 05, 2018

OUT FOR THE CAMERA: The Self-Portraits of Leonard Fink is an exhibition focusing on photographs by Leonard Fink (American, 1930-1992) a gay photographer, whose work was almost entirely unknown during his lifetime and is still little known today. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Fink took hundreds of pictures in New York City documenting the bar culture of the West Village and the annual Pride marches. He was particularly fascinated by the abandoned piers, and the sex and cruising that occurred along the waterfront. This exhibition will be distinctive in the way it centers on Fink’s own self-image: the pictures he took of himself in his apartment with some of his friends, and then later on the piers. It is first exhibition to focus on Fink’s photographs that explore themes of exhibitionism and identity. It also includes several related works of self-portraiture and images of the New York City piers by such artists as Gail Thacker, Tee A. Corinne, Del LaGrace Volcano, Shari Diamond, Stanley Stellar and Frank Hallam, mostly drawn mostly from the Leslie-Lohman Museum collection. Such comparisons will not only provide contexts – it will draw out the singularity of Fink’s vision. All works by Leonard Fink are either on loan or a gift from the collection of the LGBT Community Center National History Archive.

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