Whenever I spend time with Richard Rothstein's Manhattan Men I know I will enjoy some of the familiar locations he loves to shoot at. The streets of Manhattan of course, Central Park, building rooftops, Bryant Park and Coney Island. There is one little corner, a concrete nook, a graffiti painted corner that had me curious. I had assumed was an alley off of some street close to Richard's home.
Well, it is close to Richard's home, and close to his past, but it is not on a street... I had no idea when I asked Richard about the concrete corner it was going to elicit such an honest and meaningful response. Now, viewing those images from the concrete corner takes on a new perspective with whole new level of appreciation and enjoyment.
'It's actually a semi secluded corner on the roof of my building, 45 stories over Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. In the early to mid 1990's I would take my tricks there from the local clubs along 11th and 12th Avenues. It was the perfect place for a sexual encounter, a place to go to wait for the ecstasy to wear off, a safer place to go with a stranger than into your own home, and a place that sustained the thrill of the adventure, the hunt and the conquest. It was mostly private but still outside with the stars overhead and the cityscape behind you.'
'One always risked being discovered--but the discovery would often lead to a threesome or more as my building in those years was pretty much of a gay ghetto in the middle of the infamous Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen mega clubs of that era (Sound Factory, Roxy, Twilo, Zone DK, Tunnel, Mars, etc.)'
'Today, I use it as a location to tell part of the story of my life. The nudity is an homage to my debaucherous club years. But the way I photograph the men today is a discovery of who they really are as men, something I never learned nor cared about during the club years. I've photographed musicians, dancers, yoga instructors, dog lovers, clowns, athletes and many others. In this work, I'm putting a "face" on dozens of anonymous tricks from a time in my life when I worked on my knees without a camera. Like much of my work, the images represent a link between now and my life over the decades on this bizarre and very queer island of Manhattan.'
Thanks Richard for the images and especially for the story! See more concrete memories on Richard's incredible site Manhattan Men!
