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Latest Stories

Jimmy DeSana’s Transgressive Vision of Life and Desire

A long-awaited retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum celebrates the photographer’s work while avoiding the self-congratulatory drama of a rescue mission.
Susan Kuklin, Kachin and Michael at Michael’s Apartment, 1987

How Pictures Can Shape an Essential History of Queer Life

From photographs of same-sex weddings to HIV/AIDS caretakers, Stephen Vider’s new book shows how queer people redefined gender roles, domestic space, and the politics of intimacy in the twentieth century.
Reynaldo Rivera, Connie Rivera and Mario Calvano, Echo Park, 1990

The Glamorous World of LA’s Vanished Queer Underground

Reynaldo Rivera’s photographs of trans women, drag artists, and Latinx scenesters are a thrilling account of 1990s-era nightlife.

What It’s Like to See Photographs Again

Eight months after New York’s lockdown, a writer returns to the city’s galleries and museums—and finds images of righteous fury and ecstatic communion.

Are Virtual Viewing Rooms the Future of Photography?

With museums and galleries closed, the touch-screen world is the only one we have.

Presented in partnership with LOGO.

A Photographer’s Intimate Portraits of East Village Art Stars

In the early 1980s, Tim Greathouse photographed David Wojnarowicz, Greer Lankton, and Jimmy DeSana—and captured New York’s downtown scene before the destruction of AIDS.

In This Film Series, Queer Sex Is Front and Center

From Andy Warhol to Marlon Riggs, MoMA presents film as a radical expression of sexuality and activism.

Down and Out on the West Side Piers

Alvin Baltrop made an indelible record of gay life in New York before AIDS. But why is a queer, Black artist’s work only valuable after his death?

From an Italian Photographer, the Bygone Days of Bohemian New York

Ugo Mulas captured the swinging 1960s art world defined by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Sunil Gupta, Untitled #22, 1976

Christopher Street Revisited

In the 1970s, Sunil Gupta photographed moments of desire and liberation in New York’s gay capital.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Camp

James Bidgood’s queer and candy-colored photographs were camp before camp was stylish.

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Aperture 254

This spring, Aperture presents “Counter Histories,” an issue produced in collaboration with Magnum Foundation and informed by their ongoing Counter Histories grant initiative, featuring artists from around the world who tell new stories about how the past informs the present.