The Utopian Gestures of Alvin Baltrop 

Traces of queerness — of men cruising in the 1970s and 80s along the derelict piers of New York’s Lower West Side — move through the photographs of Alvin Baltrop. They appear as temporal gestures, charged with a desire that reaches toward a future not yet realised. Utopia is an anticipatory longing: it resists capture, offering not a concrete vision but a set of contours, outlines that can only be followed. Baltrop’s images hold this paradox with tenderness. Desire is inscribed in flesh, visible and immediate, yet it remains ungraspable in imagination. As softly as Baltrop captures this longing, the researcher Frances Montesano caringly retraces the gestures Baltrop’s photographs set into motion. Guided by Giorgio Agamben’s thinking on gesture and José Esteban Muñoz notion of ephemera as a way to queer the archive, Montesano, like Baltrop, places the body at the centre of his thought. He asks: How does the body communicate desire? And how can the body invoke and perform utopia?  


Arrested in motion, wearing only a pair of white socks. My eyes trace the twist of his back as he walks away from me, one foot already thrust into the blinding white sunlight outside. His body: an angular grey silhouette, carved into by slashes of light which scrape the line of his shoulder blade, the arc of his calf, the proud position of his arms thrust behind him, all tensed in a movement forward. Suspended in time, caught in that surge towards. There are whispers of the world he is entering; skeletal metal frames emerge from a sea of white, overgrown vines draped across bare beams. But these remain incoherent, intangible traces caught in an explosion of exposure, shifting meaning everytime I look at them. What prevails is that blinding white, so bright it seems to reach for me, rolling along the concrete walls like a wave washing to shore. Is it moving towards me or beckoning me to follow? Anything could be contained in that brightness, but despite my straining eyes, I cannot conjure a solid image, the symbols and signifiers melting into air. Yet, I can vividly imagine the press of sunlight on his body, spreading over his chest, seeping into his skin. Sensation is all that is left. Staring transfixed at his back, I am seized by a deep longing. To follow. To cross the threshold into that place that lies beyond. I want to become that light, enveloped and compressed so completely until I am nothing but embers, every molecule in my body vibrating with warmth. But I am stuck frozen in the ruins of this warehouse. Perpetually watching him walk away, forever witnessing the step forward, a moment of becoming that never ends. 

For the entirety of his life, Alvin Baltrop’s photographs remained largely unknown. They sat in dusty piles, undated and disordered, filling the corners and crevices of his small apartment. Baltrop himself occupied social space in a similar way. As a queer, working class, black man, his biography is largely undocumented and his photographic work was rejected by galleries throughout his life. Yet, similar to the piles of photographs collecting dust, he held a quiet determination, devoting himself to photography until his death in 2004.1 

In 2008, an article on his work was published in Art Forum, which drew the attention of the art world, leading to various exhibitions and critical appraisal.2 Baltrop’s oeuvre is defined by an infatuation with New York City’s Lower West Side waterfront, which he diligently documented from 1975 to 1986, when the piers were demolished. During this period, the piers were a site for gay cruising, which 

is the practice of looking for sex partners in public spaces known as ‘cruising grounds.3’ 

Over and over again, Baltrop returned to this particular space, acquainting himself with its architecture and people, capturing the unique pull it had for him. 

In the 1970s and early 80s, the Lower West Side piers were completely void of any industry. The once bustling warehouses now stood crumbling and silent on the horizon, a looming presence communicating an absence of productivity, capital, and security. But amidst this derelict setting, like the insects that inhabit rotting trees, an entire ecosystem of queer desire and community emerged. A glimpse of another world appeared: men laying naked together on the docks, sun beating down on their backs, a tangle of languid kissing and wandering hands. A moment of eye contact and slight nod unfurls into a panting, spit-slick fuck, staged in the cool desolation of the warehouse. The caress of a lover, skin on skin, appears illuminated by shafts of light streaming through metal beams. It was these moments and their unique modes of relationality that Baltrop captured in his photographs, moments of eroticism, care, and desire, unfolding in a space of disintegration and collapse. Yet, in Baltrop’s photographs, the abandoned warehouses are not simple backgrounds, not just a conveniently deserted area to hide queer pleasure from law enforcement. Instead, the piers exist in their own state of queerness. Since failing their intended purpose of stimulating trade, industry, and productivity, they became a sanctuary for those very individuals who fail to play the role of the productive, heterosexual member of capitalist society. The queer men and derelict piers are kin in this regard, hailing from the same lineage of failure which allows something “other” to come into being. Not all of Baltrop’s pier photographs hold this sense of revelation; the piers were sites for crime and drug use, which Baltrop also documents. Baltrop did not shy away from these aspects of the waterfront culture, and his photography resists romanticization. Even in his most liberated, carefree photographs there is a sense of reality, shown in the dilapidated ruins which surround the subject. The photographs produce a strange, enthralling dissonance, in which the actions of the subject seem to belong to another world and time outside the frame, another life where these iterations of desire do not have to reside in the shadows of abject, seedy ruins. They point to a place beyond, prompting the viewer to turn their head and scan the horizon. 


In one of the few quotes from Baltrop, written near the time of his death, he states “All I’m afraid of now is being like a few other guys I know who took photographs. When they die, maybe the family comes in and sees all this work they can’t do anything with, and they just shove it into the garbage. I want people to see these photographs and say ‘this is something from my time.’”4This quote reflects the crux of queer longing found in Baltrop’s work. It expresses how one’s desires and embodiment can be rejected and discarded by the present, leaving one to become a wanderer, always in search of “my time.” So what time does Baltrop’s photography belong to? Has it arrived? I do not read this as a question of if Baltrop’s work has become institutionally validated, instead I position it as referring to the unique temporal gesture that his photography both captures and performs. I propose that Baltrop’s photographs of the piers belong to the realm of utopian time, in that they are always gesturing to a future beyond what is present, a desire for different constellations of intimacy, community, and life to emerge. We catch fragments of this utopian vision through the images of men cruising, which enact desires that are not sanctioned by their present, and therefore, counter the logic of the present with actions of an imagined future. In this sense it is a partial rendering, an expression of potentiality that is just as fleeting as the furtive touch of a stranger on the waterfront. Yet, this potentiality is never realized. The vision of desire that cruising the piers hinted at; a desire that is open, communal, and emancipated from structures of control, has failed to arrive. Although homosexuality is now legal, manifestations of queer genders and sexualities are still managed by the state and societal taboos, shown by the recent ban on puberty blockers in the UK.5 The discourse surrounding queer desire is still shaped by discussions of deviance and normativity, imposing order on the multiplicity that is queer embodiment. Even the material conditions that allowed the pier’s cruising scene to emerge have ended, as the AIDS crisis stigmatized gay sex for decades and the waterfront was developed and gentrified in the 1990s. Cruising culture now operates as a relic of the past, either imitated by casual sex apps such as Grindr or carefully organized by cruising parties which require ticketed admission. Thus, Baltrop’s photographs present a complex web of utopian futures, in which both the moment of the photograph and the act of viewing it in the present reveal traces of desire that fail to manifest concretely. This performs the presence of utopia, which is forever anticipatory; a sense of potential amidst the crushing weight of the current. It is like the momentary lifting of a curtain, catching a glimpse of the world beyond, until it is hidden again under swaths of fabric. So, when the viewer encounters these photographs and says “this is something from my time,” it is a time that has not yet arrived, located in a deep longing bound together by a sense of displacement and hope. 


The utopian can often seem ephemeral; located in the mind’s imagination and manifesting through models, plans, and speculative fiction. This creates an absence of the body within utopian discourse, which has historically been dominated by the medium of writing.6 By positioning the moments of physical desire and connection in Baltrop’s photographs as utopian, I aim to explore how the body can invoke and perform utopia. I locate the body’s utopian power in gesture, which is an essential component of cruising practices. Cruising relies on non-verbal communication, using the body as the sole conduit for connection and expression. A moment of intentional eye contact signals sexual interest and the slight brushing of hands can convey intimate desires. In this way, gestures enact a unique play between presence and absence, in which the body hints at other intentions, ideas, and worlds that are not physically present. Through constant reference to absence, thus invoking it partially in the present, gesture can be framed as an embodied manifestation of utopia. In his text “Notes On Gesture,” philosopher Giorgio Agamben investigates this strange tension apparent in gesture, stating that “what is related to human beings in gestures is not the sphere of an end in itself but rather the sphere of a pure and endless mediality.”7 For Agamben, gesture exists without the intention of fulfillment; it is instead an expression of sheer desire and mediality. Agamben’s notion of mediality, which broadly speaking can be understood as the function of a medium or intermediary between entities, is focused on the power of potentiality without an end goal.8 It is a state of flux in which relationality and meaning is constantly developed without ever being solidified. The power of potentiality can be connected to a state of utopian being, which draws from the ability to imagine otherwise, seizing on desire instead of fulfillment as a core motivator. This utopian potentiality is enacted in the gestures of cruising, which open up the potential for erotic encounters that may or may not occur. The entire process of cruising, which involves waiting for potential partners, surveying one’s surroundings, and proposing interest through movement, can be read as a series of gestures filled with possibility, projecting desires that have not quite manifested and once again creating a play between absence/presence. Additionally, the moment of fruition, either in the form of rejection or a sexual exploit still retains this sense of potentiality, in that they enact a mode of relation that is not sanctified by the dominant structures of the present. This is highlighted by the fact that cruising practices emerged due to the criminalization of homosexuality, which prevented men from integrating and enacting queer desire in their “normal” lives. The format of brief, anonymous sex associated with cruising can be partially linked to this societal taboo, which meant that queer desire could only manifest in secret spaces separate from the rest of society. Consequently, the relations produced by cruising have a partial presence in which they are cordended off and absent from all other areas of life, existing as an apparition signaling other ways of being that have not come to fruition. Thus, through the lens of Agamben’s notion of gesture and situated within historical context, cruising performs a form of utopian presence, in which the gestures that constitute it produce relations that themselves gesture towards a way of life that has not yet arrived. 


This notion of utopian gesture, specifically within cruising culture, can be used to elucidate how the utopian operates and manifests aesthetically within Alvin Baltrop’s photography. The concept of gesture within a photograph is filled with contradictions. Gestures are based in movement, and that movement is ended once captured by a camera. The gesture becomes a fractured, mangled thing, isolated from its full manifestation and arrested in development. In this state of interruption, its unfolding is constantly unfulfilled, always referring to the moment before or after the photograph was taken. The viewer has no way of knowing the response to the gesture, its existence suspended in potentiality. In this sense, the very medium which Baltrop uses invokes a utopian temporality, as it positions the gestures depicted in relation to an unknown time, their full potential never manifesting. This sense of dislocation is mobilized by the positioning of Baltrop’s camera, which often peers between metal beams or lurks in dark corridors to capture its subjects from afar. The viewer takes on a voyeuristic role, scanning and searching the photograph to reveal the signs of hidden seduction: a man on his knees grasping an anonymous torso or a pair of legs intertwined. This framing performs the erotics of cruising, an activity based on the thrill of looking for what is hidden. It is a constant play between revealing and concealing, woven together by gestures that express what cannot be spoken. The utopian nature of these gestures becomes even more pronounced when presented in this way, as they appear partially hidden and inaccessible, another strange negotiation between presence and absence. 


Previously, I have discussed the operation of utopian gesture within Baltrop’s photography, examining the practice of cruising, Baltrop’s aesthetic choices, and the work’s historical context through this framework. I now aim to shift focus, moving away from considering Baltrop’s photographs in isolation, to explore the unique historical connection that his work presents through gesture. Baltrop’s photographs of the piers are widely considered important historical artifacts, but the specific way they stage an interaction between viewer and history has not been explored.9 In his essay “Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling,” queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz proposes a queer form of historicism; one that decenters concrete facts and evidence, instead turning to ephemera, in all of its unstable glory, to understand queer pasts.10   Muñoz claims that due to dominant power structures, the true strangeness and variability of queer life is not reflected in official archives. Rather, Muñoz points to gesture as a way we can access these histories, citing how gesture is used to subvert gender in drag performances or express queer desire between lovers. By positioning gesture as a historical artifact, Muñoz rejects the conception that the past is reconstructed through stable facts and evidence. Instead, it becomes located in the ephemeral, embodied realm of movement and the traces these movements leave behind. 


Baltrop’s photography is one such trace, serving as a link between present and past gestures of queer desire and expression. Through photographing cruising gestures he brings them into the present, while simultaneously dislocating them from their context and meaning, voiding them of the arc of movement and time that makes them gestures. Unlike other historical documents, such as financial records or correspondence, there is no wider framework within which to reorient them and uncover contextual clues. The piers cannot be returned to, now a wall of highrise buildings, and the relationships depicted cannot be traced outside of the singular moment in which they were captured. Baltrop’s choice not to date the photographs furthers this historical ambiguity, refusing to tie these images to a specific temporal context. The gestures then exist as remnants, displaced indications of relations and lives that have long since passed. The aesthetic format of his work, with its grainy lens and shadowed faces, accentuates this obscurity. One is left to feel their way through the image, drawing less on the situation depicted and more on the emotional landscape it evokes. These photographs can be considered part of the network of queer ephemera that Muñoz encourages us to draw upon. Given that they resist narrativization and emphasize historical ambiguity, they cannot be used to construct an interaction with the past through fact and evidence. Instead, the viewer is faced with flashes of emotion and desire, and left deeply aware of unknown stories unfolding in the shadows of the photograph. I propose that this interaction with history, one which allows for gaps and tension, produces a utopian gesture for the present to continue. In this sense, the frozen gestures extend from within the photograph, reaching towards the viewer and prompting them to realize their own lack in the present, to recognize these past gestures of desire and yearn for them to be completed. Baltrop’s photography communicates possibility, and although that possibility is never completed in the photograph, the potential it signifies is carried into the viewer’s present. The time of the photograph and the viewer is connected, bridged by a shared gesture towards an imagined future. 


While visiting New York City during the holidays, I took a walk along the Lower West Side Piers. It was a harsh, overcast day in late December, and the piers were completely deserted except for a few people walking their dogs. Everything was bathed in a wash of grey, appearing stagnant in a way that New York rarely is. The stillness was disrupted occasionally by birds traveling across the monochrome sky or a lone plastic bag tumbling from the street. But for the most part, I sat on a bench completely undisturbed, taking in the strange way time was moving. The well maintained shrubs and informative placards for tourists seemed out of place, suddenly at odds with the all encompassing greyness and silence of the scene. I felt like I was in an Alvin Baltrop photograph, twisted into some strange reversal of time, an eerie exchange of atmospheres. I became just a grainy silhouette, rendered in greyscale and shocked into silence by the shutter of a camera. Time had stumbled and become displaced, and so I simply sat on the bench, watching as the waves of the Hudson River lapped at the pier edge. It was strangely peaceful, just sitting there, waiting for something else to appear. 

Footnotes

  1. Holland Cotter, “He Captured a Clandestine Gay Culture amid the Derelict Piers,” The New York Times, September 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/arts/design/alvin-baltrop-photographs.html. ↩︎
  2. Douglas Crimp, “ALVIN BALTROP: PIER PHOTOGRAPHS, 1975–1986,” Artforum, February 1, 2008, https://www.artforum.com/features/alvin-baltrop-pier-photographs-1975-1986-187329/. ↩︎
  3. Ricardo J Millhouse, “Affect and Manhattan’s West Side Piers,” disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory 28, no. 1 (2019): 40, https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.28.03.  ↩︎
  4. Alvin Baltrop, “Making Queer History,” Making Queer History, September 2017, https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2017/8/30/alvin-baltrop. ↩︎
  5. Department of Health and Social Care, “Ban on Puberty Blockers to Be Made Indefinite on Experts’ Advice,” GOV.UK, December 11, 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ban-on-puberty-blockers-to-be-made-indefinite-on-experts-advice. ↩︎
  6. Peter, Fitting, “A short history of utopian studies,” Science Fiction Studies (2009): 121.  ↩︎
  7. Giorgio Agamben, “Notes On Gesture,” in Means Without End: Notes On Politics, e.d. Sandra Buckley, Michael Hardt, and Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 57-58. ↩︎
  8. Agamben, “Notes On Gesture,” 56. ↩︎
  9. Fiona Anderson, “Cruising the Queer Ruins of New York’s Abandoned Waterfront,” Performance Research 20, no. 3 (2015): 138. ↩︎
  10. José Esteban Muñoz, “Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling,” in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, (New York University Press: 2009), 65-81. ↩︎