Anonymous Encounters

Untitled Anonymous, from Andrew Roth's PPP Editions, features an archive of remarkably obsessive photos taken primarily in New York in the mid-1960s by an unknown photographer. As critic Vince Aletti writes:

"For anyone in search of the well-packed crotch, Times Square was a mecca, and most of the photographs here were taken in its vicinity. Some of the more striking images catch solitary figures like athletes at rest, languid but vigilant, primed for their next move.

"Others record the moment when a stud and a prospective customer meet, huddling together in a doorway to negotiate the terms of their transaction. But hustlers were not the only guys letting it all hang out in the 1960s: The photographer's subjects include construction workers, sailors, the occasional office drone, and a number of gay men, all packing, some so outrageously you suspect they've stuffed a sock down there.

"The photographer clearly had a one-track mind, but we don't know anything else about him. He was a dedicated, modestly skilled amateur, maybe a student, more likely self-taught. He cared about making good prints, and, on the evidence here, he knew how to make good pictures -- but did he show them to anyone? Considering their obsessive, erotic focus, could he show them to anyone?"

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