Gay Streets of America

Nicholas Blair | Castro to Christopher, Gay Streets of America 1979 - 1986
April 11 - September 27, 2025

Between 1979 and 1986, after Stonewall and before the worst days of the AIDS epidemic, there was a period of giddy, blossoming gay life in places often seen as “gay paradises.” The best known were San Francisco’s Castro District, New York’s Christopher Street and Fire Island, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

As a teenager, Nicholas Blair was lured to San Francisco from New York after hitchhiked to Buenos Aires to lived in a hippie-style arts commune just across town from the Castro district. Blair began honing his craft as a photographer amidst the explosion of LGBTQ life with a Leica rangefinder camera loaned to him by a childhood friend.

Shortly after Blair’s arrival at the commune, his brother introduced him to the photographer Larry Bair, who after taking Blair under his wing, introduced him to the esteemed photographer and teacher, Henry “Hank” Wessel. Both of Blair and Bair would sit in on Hank’s classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. Blair immersed himself in photography and built his own darkroom to concentrate exclusively on black and white, which Blair loved for its less literal but more evocative quality. Blair could also control the entire process. Color was a harder operation, and unless the light was soft, the images would be contrast and harsh. Eventually, Blair earned his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute without an undergraduate degree.

If the shadow of AIDS were not lingering over these photographs, it would be as though they were showing us an alternate universe where full legal equality for LGBTQ people could have come much sooner. These historic images encapsulate of a few places in America, where for the very first time, and for a very brief while, it was ok to be gay.