Tom Bianchi's Vintage Polaroids Capture Fire Island's Historic Queer Haven

New York’s Fire Island today has become a superficial summer escape from city life, but for generations of queers before us, the 36 mile-long paradise off the coast of Long Island was a more serious refuge from everyday homophobia. This forgotten history has been chronicled in Fire Island Pines, Throckmorton Fine Art’s new exhibit featuring photography by Tom Bianchi, who documented the free-spirited community in its “golden” age. 

“The world we were living in disregarded us and called us perverts,” Bianchi told VICE. “So the brilliance of Fire Island was that it was built by those people who imagined a different world and set out to create it. We carved out the tiniest little place just for ourselves, where we could be safe and laugh and play with one another on the beach, and not have any negative judgement surrounding us.”