The Photographic Story of Gay Fire Island Isn’t Over

Queer New York nightlife photographer koitz keeps getting asked the same question: Will koitz Gay Fire Island ever be reissued?

But he isn’t interested in simply bringing the same book back to life. He has hundreds of photographs that never made it into the original, new stories to tell, and a different perspective on an island that may look familiar but has never really stood still.

Published in 2020, koitz Gay Fire Island captured a moment in the lives of the island’s LGBTQ+ communities even though it covered 14 summers. Since then, the world has changed—and Fire Island has changed with it, even if some of its rituals, characters, and unmistakable spirit remain remarkably intact. The pandemic marked a particularly extraordinary chapter. For koitz, photographs from the COVID years belong in any new book, documenting a time when the ways people gathered, connected, and experienced queer community were profoundly altered.

So why simply reissue a book when there is an opportunity to tell a bigger story

Naked guy looking at coffee table book koitz Gay Fire Island | koitz photography

A New Gay Fire Island Book?

koitz believes there is room for a new coffee-table book about gay Fire Island—one that looks beyond nostalgia to capture the island as it is today, while preserving the moments that have shaped it. And any such project, he argues, should embrace both of its defining LGBTQ+ communities: Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines, each with its own character, history, and place in the island’s queer imagination.

Invasion of the Pines 2020 | Fire Island Pines LGBTQ+ Tradition | koitzA documentary photograph capturing the 2020 Invasion of the Pines in Fire Island Pines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of koitz's ongoing archive of LGBTQ+ history, queer culture, and Fire Island traditions.

He is open to proposals from publishers willing to take on the project. The question, then, is not so much whether koitz Gay Fire Island deserves a second life, but whether there is still an appetite for a new photographic portrait of a place that has meant so much to generations of LGBTQ+ people.

After all, an island can remain familiar while its story keeps evolving. And through koitz’s lens, there may be plenty more of that story left to tell.

Would you make room on your coffee table for a new book about gay Fire Island?

Bathing in Cherry Grove Fire Island | koitz photographyA quiet portrait of a man bathing in a galvanized metal tub in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, photographed by koitz.