Alvin Baltrop archive tour with Yona Backer
Alvin Baltrop, Untitled (Portrait), n.d. (1980–1986), Silver gelatin print, 4.5 × 6.6 in. Courtesy of Third Streaming.
March 26th, 6PM
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Please join us for an evening with Soft Network friends and supporters at the home and studio of board member Yona Backer for a tour of the Alvin Baltrop archive. The tour will be followed by a reception at a nearby location to toast our certification as a 501c3 tax exempt organization and recent awards.
Alvin Baltrop (1948-2004) was a visionary whose photography immortalized the decaying beauty of New York City’s Hudson River piers during the 1970s and 1980s. Inspired by the liberatory potential of alternative cultures, Baltrop's art captured the West Side Piers, Black communities in Harlem and the Bronx, and the intimacies of his friends. Archiving Baltrop’s work preserves the history of Black, gay New Yorkers—artists, dancers, families, activists, sex workers, friends, lovers, and children.
This event has limited capacity and is a ticketed fundraiser for Soft Network. If you are unable to attend, please consider purchasing a ticket for an artist or making a donation.
Purchase tickets here:
Soft Network empowers contemporary artists and those working with artist estates and archives to imagine and implement new and sustainable legacy models. Our mission is to provide space for shared dialogue around this critical yet overlooked field and to redress exclusions in art history. Soft Network’s next exhibition, dearly Loved friends: Photographs by Sheyla Baykal, curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade, opens April 3, 2025. The Estate of Sheyla Baykal is Soft Network's third Archive-in-Residence.
