Tom Bianchi: 63 E 9th Street - NYC Polaroids 1975-1983

Intimate erotic portraits from the Fire Island Pines author/photographer.

In 1975 Tom Bianchi moved to New York City, working at Columbia Pictures as in-house counsel. Columbia gave Bianchi a Polaroid SX – 70 camera, which he took to the Pines on summer weekends; those pictures became the 2013 book Fire Island Pines: Polaroids 1975–1983. Now, some 44 years later, we get a first look at another extraordinary collection of Bianchi’s Polaroids, taken in his East 9th St apartment.

Whereas Fire Island offers an expansive communal experience situated on a sunny sand bar out in the Atlantic under huge open skies, Bianchi’s New York apartment was an intimate, track-lit den, a safe stage where he and his friends played out erotic night games. Playful, nostalgic and sexy, Tom Bianchi: 63 E 9th Street is an essential companion book to Fire Island Pines and an important document of urban gay life.