This 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.