koitz: Gay Fire Island Photographer — Exhibitions & Projects
Gay Fire Island photographer koitz has spent more than two decades documenting LGBTQ+ life, queer community, freedom, and culture across Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines, and New York City.
Through an evolving body of photography, exhibitions, photo books, documentary film, and public installations, koitz has created an intimate visual record of Gay Fire Island — capturing the people, places, celebrations, relationships, beaches, nightlife, and everyday moments that give the island its distinctive character.
Photographing Gay Fire Island
Fire Island has long been an important destination for LGBTQ+ people seeking community, freedom, self-expression, and connection.
Koitz photographs this experience from within the community. His photographs move between the extraordinary and the everyday: crowded beaches and quiet afternoons, summer parties and intimate encounters, parades and performances, nightlife and moments of friendship. Over the years, this work has become an extensive portrait of queer life on Fire Island, particularly in Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines. Rather than simply documenting a destination, koitz's photography records a living community.
Books | koitz Gay Fire Island: A Long-Term Photography Project
One of koitz's best-known bodies of work is koitz Gay Fire Island, a photographic project developed over more than fifteen years. The photographs capture the energy and intimacy of Fire Island through beach scenes, celebrations, nightlife, parades, performances, friendships, and spontaneous encounters. Published as a photo book and presented through exhibitions, Gay Fire Island offers a visual portrait of LGBTQ+ life and community on the island. The project is both a celebration and a document — preserving moments that might otherwise disappear with the passing of seasons and generations.
Pretty Gay I
Pretty Gay I is a collection of 12 portraits of 12 different sitters, all photographed in New York City. Moving through the city’s queer social and cultural landscape, koitz captures individual personalities, style, intimacy, sexuality, and self-expression. Each portrait offers a different encounter, creating a varied and energetic portrait of queer life in New York.
Pretty Gay II
Pretty Gay II: Mitch in Wonderland takes a more sustained approach to portraiture, focusing exclusively on Mitch, whom koitz photographed over a period of years in 12 different locations throughout Southern California.
Each location creates a new visual context for Mitch, transforming the book into both an intimate portrait and a photographic journey through Southern California. Together, the images trace koitz’s evolving relationship with his subject while exploring themes of masculinity, sexuality, identity, fashion, place, and personal expression.
koitz Gay Fire Island
Photography · Photo book · Exhibitions · Archive
Exhibitions | Gay Fire Island: Photographs of Queer Community
In 2021, koitz's work was presented in the exhibition Gay Fire Island: Photographs of Queer Community at the historic Cherry Grove Community House and Theater. Curated by Parker Sargent for the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, the exhibition brought koitz's photographs directly into one of the most significant community spaces on Fire Island. The exhibition explored the people, atmosphere, relationships, and social life that make Cherry Grove such an important part of LGBTQ+ history. For koitz, the photographs are not simply observations of queer culture. They are records of a community and the people who create it.
Gay Fire Island Featured by The New York Historical
Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove
The landmark exhibition Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove at The New York Historical featured one of koitz's iconic photographs. The image, Nurse (Cherry Grove, 2010), was presented in the section A Changing Community.
Fire Island: Out of the Sun
koitz's Fire Island photography was also presented in Fire Island: Out of the Sun at the Verle Annis Gallery at the University of Southern California in 2015. The exhibition followed koitz's receipt of the USC Founders Cultural Award and introduced his Fire Island work to a broader audience. The photographs continued his exploration of the island as a place of freedom, community, identity, and cultural expression.
Bringing Photography Back Into Cherry Grove
In 2025, koitz's photographs were displayed in large-scale open-air installations throughout Cherry Grove. Instead of remaining inside a gallery, the photographs became part of the landscape itself — appearing along boardwalks and community spaces where residents and visitors could encounter images of Fire Island's past and present. The installations created a dialogue between photography, place, and memory, allowing historic and contemporary images to become part of the everyday experience of Cherry Grove.
Films & Documentaries | In the Meat Rack
koitz's work extends beyond still photography. In the Meat Rack is a documentary film project created in collaboration with filmmaker Parker Sargent, exploring the secluded wooded dune area of Cherry Grove known as the Meat Rack. The area has a distinctive place within the history and culture of queer Fire Island. The film explores its landscape, stories, community, and history, looking at a space that has remained largely hidden from the conventional image of Fire Island.
In the Meat Rack
Documentary film · Queer history · Cherry Grove
Preserving Queer Fire Island History
koitz's photography also plays a role in preserving the visual history of Cherry Grove. Through ongoing archival collaborations and photographic contributions to the Cherry Grove Archives Collection, his work helps preserve photographs of people, places, celebrations, traditions, and everyday community life. For a community whose history has often been preserved through personal photographs, memories, and stories, this visual archive has particular significance. The photographs become more than documentation. They become community memory.
A Queer Fire Island Photographer
To describe koitz simply as a queer Fire Island photographer is to identify both the subject and perspective of his work. His photographs are rooted in LGBTQ+ life but are ultimately about people — friendship, intimacy, identity, freedom, celebration, belonging, and the passage of time. From Cherry Grove's boardwalks to Fire Island Pines, from the beach to the nightlife, koitz has created a visual record of a community in constant motion. The work celebrates Fire Island while also recognizing that the island's greatest story is the people who have made it their home, gathering place, refuge, and community.
Explore koitz
koitz's work continues across photography, exhibitions, books, film, and archival projects. Explore the projects that document Gay Fire Island, queer community, and LGBTQ+ history through more than two decades of photography.
Gay Fire Island Photographer
Queer Fire Island Photographer
Fire Island Photography
LGBTQ+ Photography
Cherry Grove Photography
Fire Island Pines Photography
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