An Exclusive Peek Inside The Estate of Leonard Fink

From: Gay Cities

In June 1993, the Estate of Leonard Fink donated a photographic collection to The Center in New York City through its executor, Steven E. Bing. The materials in the Fink Estate was willed to four AIDS related organizations who gave all of the rights to the photos to the Center Archive. Some of these were signed “Len Elliot,” which might have been a pseudonym of Fink’s. The collection consists of over 25,000 negatives and images capturing Greenwich Village and much of the spirit of the late 60s and 70s.

Some of the most well known images in the collection are Fink’s work at “The Piers” along the Hudson River. Fink documented over 25 years of gay life in New York City but his photography was never exhibited or published in his lifetime. He was self taught and used an old 35mm camera while working out of a homemade darkroom in his West 92nd Street apartment. Rich Wandel, an Archivist and Historian for The Center’s National History Archive is currently working on a book of Fink Images that will be released later this summer.

 Photography by Leonard Fink, Courtesy of The Center