Baltrop enlisted in the Navy in 1969 as a
medic during the
Vietnam War and continued taking photos, mainly of his friends in sexually provocative poses. Because he wanted to spend more time taking photos at the Hudson River piers, he quit his job as a cab driver to become a self-employed mover. He would park his van at the piers for days at a time, living out of his van to take pictures. He knew every person that he photographed, and people often volunteered to be his subjects. Younger boys and men at the piers often confided in him about their sexual orientation, their relationships with their families, their housing status, and their work. The piers saw
cruising, anonymous sex, and occasional
art interventions. His photographs not only captured human personalities, but also the aesthetics of the dilapidated piers. In 2008,
University of Rochester art professor
Douglas Crimp wrote an article about Baltrop for
Artforum magazine that regenerated interest in Baltrop's work. In 2012, the artist's solo exhibition titled
Perspectives 179— Alvin Baltrop: Dreams into Glass in the
Contemporary Art Museum Houston included almost 100
gelatin silver prints that were shot between 1969 and 1980. The most captivating and intimate images in the show were shot while Baltrop was in the Navy. These are dated between 1969 and 1972 and had an unmistakably erotic atmosphere. In his photograph called
Three Navy Sailors, a trio of young black men in uniform tease the camera. The man to the far right slyly smiles and sticks his tongue out while the man next to him throws a side glance. The third man to the far left is seen suppressing a laugh. Many of Baltrop's pictures from the pier use distance to enhance his voyeuristic approach. In ''Don't let them see you,
published in his book called The Piers
, Baltrop had positioned his camera inside a darkened area looking out at the shadowy foreground and a male figure looking down at another, who is crouched beneath him and performing a sexual act. Neither one of them acknowledges the presence of the nearby photographer and, by extension, the viewer. In another image, Man looking in a window,'' we see a man wearing a shirt and nothing from the waist down, except his boots, peering into a building through broken windowpanes. This act of
voyeurism parallels the photographer's intention when taking this image.
The Bronx Museum held a retrospective of his work in 2019
The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop. Items from his personal archive (owned by the Bronx Museum) were shown to the public for the first time in this exhibit. ==Personal life==