*The Bar in Duffy’s Hotel*, photographed by Paul Himmel in the late 1940s.

*Fire Island*, by Wolfgang Tillmans, 2015.

*Top,* Henry Geldzahler and David Hockney, by Arthur Lambert, 1970s; *above,* *Ilan’s Pool (Ladder),* by Stephen Truax, 2023.

Untitled photograph, by George Daniell, circa 1940s.

*Jodie in My Kitchen,* by Wolfgang Tillmans, 2023.

*George Platt Lynes on Fire Island,* by PaJaMa, circa 1940s.

*Two Men on a Beach,* by Mark Beard, date unknown.

Dick and Doe Avedon, by Lillian Bassman, late 1940s.

*Big Boat in Harbor,* by John Laub, 1992.

*Chuck Howard, Fire Island,* by PaJaMa, circa 1954.

Fire Island Time

A new coffee-table book looks beyond the island’s reputation as a queer summer utopia, revealing it, for the first time, as a creative hub that influenced artists from Richard Avedon to Wolfgang Tillmans

Fire Island Art: 100 Years is “only masquerading as a coffee-table book,” its editor, John Dempsey, said at the launch party in late March. On the top floor of the Nine Orchard hotel, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a group of men, young and old, and some women sprinkled in, gathered to celebrate the publication. As Dempsey explained, the book is more than a collection of images. It holds the story of Fire Island, a history that hasn’t been fully told until now.

Built up in the 1870s as a resort for nuclear families, Fire Island was destroyed by a hurricane in the 1930s, which quickly chased away its upper-class vacationers. In their absence, a queer utopia was born. Just a 90-minute drive from New York City, the island became a summer hub, a place where the L.G.B.T.Q. community could live and party freely. With that freedom came a surge in creativity, and that is where the book begins. It examines, for the first time, Fire Island as a place where some of the greatest contemporary artists gathered, were inspired, or left their mark.