PHOTO STORY

Fire Island: Queer Life in the Shadow of the Fire

Even when a photographer has spent years capturing the same place, it is not always clear that the photographs being taken will one day become a record of history. At the time, they are simply moments of life unfolding—people gathering, celebrating, performing, and enjoying the freedom of being themselves. Yet, looking back, these images often reveal something much greater. 

Lavinia Draper Performing with the Burned Grove Hotel in the BackgroundLavinia Draper Performing with the Burned Grove Hotel in the Background | koitz photo

Queer New York nightlife photographer koitz captured a pool party at the Ice Palace and Grove Hotel just a few months after a devastating fire had destroyed much of the hotel that spring.

Lavinia Draper Performing at the Ice palace in Cherry Grove with Burned Grove Hotel in the BackgroundLavinia Draper Performing at the Ice palace in Cherry Grove with Burned Grove Hotel in the Background | koitz photo

This photograph of performer Lavinia Draper at the pool party offers a glimpse into the vibrant world of queer life on Fire Island. More than a snapshot of a summer afternoon, it documents the people, places, and sense of community that shaped Cherry Grove, the Fire Island Pines, and the Meat Rack. Through koitz’s lens, we are able to revisit a moment in queer history that might otherwise have faded from memory—a world built around gathering, performance, freedom, and the simple joy of being together.

From koitz' project Brock in a Dress. Brock posing in the old Grove Hotel that burnt in 2015 | koitzThis photograph comes from koitz’s Brock in a Dress project, a portrait series centered on Brock and his appearances in dresses throughout Fire Island. Here, Brock poses inside the historic Grove Hotel in Cherry Grove, creating a striking image that brings together portraiture, fashion, architecture, and Fire Island history.The Grove Hotel was an important landmark in Cherry Grove and a familiar part of the community’s distinctive architectural and social landscape. Its loss to fire in 2015 makes photographs of the building particularly significant today. Images made before the fire preserve details of the hotel’s interiors and provide a visual connection to a place that played a role in generations of Fire Island summers.Brock’s pose adds another layer to the photograph. The Brock in a Dress project uses clothing, performance, personality, and place to explore the playful freedom associated with Fire Island. By photographing Brock inside the old Grove Hotel, koitz combines an individual portrait with a record of a historic Cherry Grove location.The image therefore works both as part of a personal photographic series and as a document of Fire Island’s LGBTQ+ cultural history. It preserves Brock, the old Grove Hotel, and a particular moment in Cherry Grove before the landmark disappeared.

The remains of the burned hotel were eventually torn down, and just a year later, a brand-new Grove Hotel was ready to welcome hundreds of visitors back to Cherry Grove. The new building marked a fresh beginning, but something of the old hotel’s character and personality had been lost. Seen today, koitz’s photographs preserve more than the people who gathered there; they hold on to the atmosphere of a place in transition, capturing a fleeting moment when the past was still visible and the future had yet to take shape.