On June 20, 1969, a week before the first brick was thrown at Stonewall, a group of men armed with axes descended upon Forest Hills Park in Queens, cutting down dozens of trees in a vigilante act of destruction. While this event barely received news coverage when it initially happened, publications like the New York Times discussed it decades later as one of several “turning points” for LGBT rights. The park, like many others around New York City, was known to be a gay cruising ground—one of the few public spaces where queer people could express desire, find connection, and simply exist. Put clearly: This park was a good place to find men for quick sexual encounters, and the trees helped make the spot a bit more private. The attackers claimed they were reclaiming the park for “the community,” but their true intent was clear: to eliminate a gathering place for gay men. That moment—largely forgotten by mainstream history—reminds us that cruising, at its core, was always about more than sex. It was about survival, about claiming space, about the quiet radicalism of queer presence.

Cruising in the Shadows uncovers a vital but overlooked story of LGBTQ+ life in New York City: the culture of cruising which dates back more than a century. In parks, along piers, inside train stations, and beneath flickering street lights, generations of queer people sought each other out through an unspoken language of glances, gestures, and codes. Long before dating apps, these moments were filled with risk and electricity, urgency and hope. To cruise was to risk arrest, violence, or public shame—but also to claim desire and build connection on one’s own terms. This exhibition tells that story through photography, historical documents, activist artifacts, and contemporary artwork that shine light on what once lived in the shadows.

Cruising has always been a practice deeply rooted in geography—anchored not just in desire, but in physical space. Research and materials from the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project reveal how cruising quite literally reshaped the city for queer people. From Central Park to the edges of the West Side Highway, these spaces formed a hidden network of queer life that thrived in plain sight. Cruising in the Shadows traces that geography through photography, video, visual arts, and installation offering a full view of how culturally significant cruising has been to the LGBTQ+ community.

Over time, Cruising developed its own discrete visual language, and none was more iconic than the Hanky Code. Worn in back pockets, colored handkerchiefs signaled everything from preferred roles to specific kinks. The exact origins of the code are unclear—some trace it to a 1970 Village Voice article, others to San Francisco shops like The Trading Post or Mr. S Leather, who expanded the system to sell surplus bandanas. In 1972, Larry Townsend published the Leatherman’s Handbook, a bare-all account of the codes and rituals of the gay men’s hardcore leather scene—perhaps the first time the Hanky code was written down and published for anybody to read. Around the same time, the lesbian-feminist BDSM group, the Samois Collective, published a version of the Hanky code tailored to queer women through their book Coming to Power.

Despite its debated beginnings, the Hanky Code quickly became a unifying tool. No matter where you were if you knew the code, you could cruise in plain sight, broadcasting your desires while remaining invisible to outsiders. This exhibition features a wall-sized display of handkerchiefs and their meanings, alongside original materials, celebrating the Hanky Code as both a cultural artifact and living art form.

Arthur Tress’s photographs offer a rare and evocative glimpse into New York City’s cruising culture at the end of the 1960s. Beginning in 1968, Tress brought his Hasselblad camera into the Ramble, a wooded section of Central Park long known as a discreet gathering spot for queer men. From his apartment on Riverside Drive, the Ramble was just a ten-minute walk—a secluded stage where he returned regularly for over a year, documenting the quiet rituals of desire that unfolded beneath the trees. Drawing from his background as an ethnographic photographer, Tress approached the cruising scene as both participant and observer. The resulting black-and-white photographs capture not only sexual tension, but also solitude, anticipation, and the coded language of queer survival.

Some images were taken from a distance, others more posed—men leaning against trees, resting on rocks, or casting glances across shadowed paths. Tress described cruising as akin to photography: an act of waiting, watching, and and acting at just the right moment. At the time, these photos were considered too intimate, too openly queer to exhibit publicly. For decades, they remained private. Now, they are both art and archive - evidence of a subculture simultaneously in plain sight yet invisible to the world in 1968. In revisiting this body of work, Tress not only maps the emotional terrain of cruising, but honors those who claimed space, sought connection, and made lives within the margins.

Artwork by Robert Sherer brings a different kind of intimacy into the space—his All-American Boys, rendered in vibrant, nostalgic color, subvert the innocence of 1950s comic books by revealing queerness at their center. Sherer reframes gay desire not as deviant or marginal, but as a natural part of the American landscape. His works are not fantasies—they are refracted memories of what cruising was and what it meant.

Also featured is the Bob Damron Address Book—an essential artifact of gay history. First published in the 1960s, the Damron guide cataloged cruising spots, gay bars, and other safe havens across the United States, quietly building an underground atlas of queer America. With clinical brevity and coded language, it guided gay travelers to not only sex, but safety, solidarity, and the possibility of being seen. These sites were not secret—they were intentionally ignored by a dominant culture that refused to acknowledge queer life. But for those in the know, these places pulsed with potential, offering fleeting moments of freedom in a world that too often demanded silence.

Of course, the shadow side of cruising’s history includes the toll of the AIDS epidemic. Public sex, once a source of liberation, became entangled with fear and loss. Yet, even amid this crisis, the queer community found ways to respond with love, creativity, and care. A 12-by-12-foot AIDS Quilt panel in the exhibition honors the staff and patrons of The Saint, a legendary men-only nightclub from 1980 to 1988, became both sanctuary and battleground. The Saint’s live sex shows were repurposed into sites of education, demonstrating safe sex practices and fighting stigma in real time. It is a testament to the fact that even at the height of loss, queerness remained communal, joyful, and defiant. The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project lists The Saint as a popular cruising spot and notes that its opulent design earned it the nickname “The Vatican of Disco.”

As the internet transformed how people connect, cruising as it once existed began to fade. Dating apps replaced parks and backrooms. Changing social attitudes and legal protections reduced the need for secrecy. But something intangible was lost—the thrill of spontaneity, the geography of queer meeting, the profound creativity of a culture built in the margins. That is what makes this exhibition so important.

Cruising in the Shadows asks viewers to look again at the spaces they pass by every day—a bench at a train station, a city park, a quiet path in the woods—and to recognize the invisible queer histories layered within. It also challenges straight viewers to understand that LGBTQ+ life has always been present, unfolding in ways that may have gone unnoticed but were deeply real and profoundly meaningful. This is a story that spans generations, and yet has often been left out of official histories.

By bringing together art, photography, video, archival materials, and ephemera, this exhibition reclaims those hidden places and reframes them not as secrets, but as stories. Stories of desire and danger, of connection and community. It invites viewers into a world that once lived in the shadows, and now steps into the light.

Open Call Exhibition
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