NEW YORK, N.Y.- In the 1970s, the abandoned piers along the hudson river in manhattan became a conduit and locus for artistic experimentation. while Gordon MattaClark, Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, Dan Graham and many others produced collaborative and multidisciplinary works that radically challenged artistic traditions, Alvin Baltrop (1948 – 2004) turned his camera to a phenomenon that has been rarely documented and written about—the precarious lives of the individuals who gathered and lived at the piers up until their demolition in the late 80s. Baltrop captured intimate portraits of friends, lovers, and strangers; homeless people, runaways and murder victims, sexual encounters; as well as the decaying architecture and the landscape of a manhattan that no longer exists. The pier photographs are not simply visual documents about an untapped part of the history of New York; they also show how Baltrop’s practice unfolded during this turbulent period. “alvin Bal