Making Queer History Monthly - Updates From Third Streaming
Extending Pride Month and New Milestones in Archiving Alvin Baltrop's Legacy
Dear Comrades—
We are thrilled to share that Third Streaming has been awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation to digitize Alvin Baltrop’s seminal archive. Thanks to their generous support, we will be able to digitize over 30,000 negatives and contact sheets—of which less than five percent were printed during Baltrop’s lifetime. Working with Tom Powel Imaging, we will not only scan the archive at high resolution but also build a new, cloud-based database with searchable metadata, making Baltrop’s work accessible to scholars, curators, and the public for generations to come.
This project is about more than preservation; it is about visibility, recognition, and the safeguarding of cultural memory. Alvin Baltrop's photographs offer a singular record of New York’s piers, a space of community, freedom, and resistance for queer life at a time when safe havens were few. His archive also captures early Pride marches in the West Village, bearing witness to the struggles and celebrations of a movement fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights. In celebrating Pride Month, we honor Baltrop’s contribution as an artist and as a vital documentarian of our collective history.
In March, we had the pleasure of hosting a gathering at the Alvin Baltrop Archive in partnership with Soft Network. Board members, artists, legacy stewards, writers, and archivists came together for a special in-person visit. It was a powerful reminder of the community Soft Network is fostering—one rooted in collaboration, care, and the shared commitment to preserving cultural legacies.
I was also fortunate to attend a convening organized by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, with the support of the Mellon Foundation, focused on the vital work of artist legacy preservation. It was deeply inspiring to be in conversation with peers working across diverse approaches, and to feel the wisdom and generosity of elders in the field. We are grateful for the leadership and investment of both the Mellon and Joan Mitchell Foundations, who are doing so much to advance legacy work, particularly on behalf of artists who have historically been overlooked.
We are honored to be part of this growing community. Thank you for being on this journey with us—and happy Pride.
From the heart,
Yona Backer, Founder of Third Streaming
Updates From the Archive: Randa Elsayed, Archivist
Serving as the archivist for Alvin Baltrop’s photography is both a responsibility and a profound act of care. It’s a role rooted in honoring his radical vision, ensuring that the histories he so boldly documented are preserved, studied, and shared with future generations.
My time in the archive continues to be both illuminating and deeply moving. Through Baltrop’s work, I’ve not only gained a richer understanding of his life and artistic practice, but also deep insights into queer history and the untold stories of the West Side piers during a time of extraordinary courage, resilience, and creativity. As a young queer person of color, working in the archive during Pride Month felt especially meaningful. It reaffirmed how powerfully Baltrop’s work continues to resonate every day.
We’re also thrilled to welcome Adriana Dos Santos as our new Archive Intern. Adriana joins us with enthusiasm and curiosity, and we’re excited to support her as she begins this journey into the world of archival work and contributes to preserving Baltrop’s remarkable legacy.
In Honor of Pride Month
During Pride Month, we hold space for both celebration and resistance. As we honor the resilience of queer communities past and present, we also remain vigilant, recognizing the ongoing challenges to LGBTQ+ rights and the urgent need for solidarity and action. Alvin Baltrop’s work remains a beacon in these conversations as we acknowledge and realize that our pride should not be reserved to a single month.
As a Black, queer photographer working in New York City during the 1970s and 80s, Baltrop documented the overlooked and often criminalized lives of queer people living and loving along the Hudson River piers. His photographs, unvarnished, intimate, and defiant, offer a rare and vital window into underground queer life at a time when it was largely invisible to mainstream culture.
Baltrop’s images speak to the power of presence. His images, raw and deeply human, challenge the erasure of Black and queer bodies from both the art world and historical narratives. By documenting these underground spaces, Baltrop provided a visual record of resilience and community in the face of systemic neglect and the looming AIDS crisis. His work reclaims queer history from the margins, insisting that these stories, often ignored or actively erased, deserve recognition.
In doing so, Baltrop’s photography not only serves as a radical act of witnessing but also as a call for justice, demanding visibility and dignity for those who have long been pushed to society’s periphery.
This past Pride Month, and always, we proudly uplift Baltrop’s legacy and continue the work of preserving and sharing the stories he so fearlessly told.
The Hudson River Park: Then and Now
We are honored to have Alvin Baltrop’s works be a part of Hudson River Park: Then & Now, a public exhibition chronicling the transformation of Manhattan’s West Side waterfront from the 1970s to the present. Baltrop’s photographs, several of which are on view at the exhibit, document an era when the Hudson River piers were neglected by the city but vibrantly reclaimed by queer communities, artists, and unhoused people finding space to exist and find community
For Baltrop, the waterfront was both his subject and sanctuary. It was a site of intimacy, vulnerability, and resistance. His photographs are not only stunning visual records of the piers’ raw yet deteriorating beauty, but also deeply personal and political testaments to the lives and bodies that animated those spaces and the individuals and moments he wished to preserve. In a city rapidly reshaped by development, Baltrop’s work preserves a critical chapter of New York’s social and cultural history that is too often erased or overlooked.
We are honored that the Hudson River Park Trust and Hudson River Park Friends are presenting this thoughtful and timely exhibition, and for recognizing the enduring importance of artists like Alvin Baltrop, whose lens challenged dominant narratives and offered alternative views of public space. We invite the public to visit the Tribeca esplanade, between Piers 25 and 26, to engage with this powerful collection of photographs and to reflect on the layered past that continue to shape our present.
Other artists featured in the exhibit include: Carl Glassman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Irene Liberman, Darleen Rubin, Shelley Seccombe and Andreas Sterzing.
Bennington College Archive Visit
In April, Third Streaming had the pleasure of hosting students from Bennington College for an in-depth tour of the Alvin Baltrop Archive.
The group, comprised of students from a variety of artistic disciplines, engaged with Baltrop’s work firsthand, exploring vintage prints, contact sheets, slides, and rare archival materials. Together, we discussed archival methods, the importance of preserving marginalized histories, and Baltrop’s singular place in both queer and photographic canons.
A highlight of the visit was viewing an archival interview with Baltrop himself, during which he reflected on his photographs, some of which the students were holding in their hands. The footage offered a rare and intimate glimpse into his world, revealing his sharp intellect, gentle humor, and unwavering commitment to documenting truth. It was a powerful moment of connection across generations, inviting students into the living heart of the archive.
We’re always grateful for opportunities to share Baltrop’s work and legacy with students, and to foster meaningful dialogue around art, activism, and historical memory.