One of the features I’m most excited about in the upcoming New York-themed issue of Pink Mince (order your copy now!) is a selection of photos of men in the West Village in the late 70s by Leonard Fink, whose work is archived at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street. I chose a mix of images that felt like they really captured some magical moments of a lost time in the neighborhood, but I may have curated the selection even better than I realized.
I was showing my friend Sina a preview of the issue, and he immediately caught something in an image from 1978 that I missed. Look at this detail:
That’s Robert Mapplethorpe, isn’t it? Suddenly, my photo feature of a lost New York seems that much more poignant.