{"id":112609,"date":"2025-10-10T04:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T04:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/112609\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T04:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T04:22:11","slug":"photographer-arthur-tress-takes-jordan-tannahill-for-a-walk-around-the-ramble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/112609\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer Arthur Tress Takes Jordan Tannahill For a Walk Around the Ramble"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Arthur<\/a><\/p>\n

All photos by Arthur Tress.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s, when the photographer Arthur Tress<\/a> began photographing The Ramble, the shadowy and overgrown stretch of Central Park that\u2019s served as a cruising ground for gay men for nearly a century, he hadn\u2019t considered that the images he was capturing might one day find an enthusiastic audience, let alone be considered either art or ethnography. \u201cThey were mostly for myself,\u201d he explains, \u201cbut I had a sense that they were historically important.\u201d Over 50 years later, Tress\u2019s photographs\u2014noirish, dreamlike scenes in which men lurk and leer, wait and watch\u2014are getting their due. This month marks the publication of\u00a0The Ramble, NYC 1969, the very first collection of Tress\u2019s Ramble photographs and a vital, provocative document of a time when queer city life happened largely in the shadows. \u201cIt was a kind of social commentary on the paranoia, anxiety, loneliness, and frustration of gay men at that period,\u201d the photographer told Prince Faggot playwright Jordan Tannahill<\/a> last month. \u201cWe really don\u2019t like that self-image of the wounded homosexual. But I think what\u2019s going to make these pictures interesting to people is that we\u2019re ready to acknowledge that part of ourselves.\u201d Below, the two have a wide-ranging conversation about hierarchies, hanky codes, and the art of cruising\u2014then and now.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

JORDAN TANNAHILL: How are you?\u00a0<\/p>\n

ARTHUR TRESS: I\u2019m very well, thank you.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: First of all, I\u2019ve only seen the book in PDF form, but it just looks extraordinary. The images of The Ramble are so evocative. They seem to be a combination of posed photographs and some that are more kind of documentary in nature. How did the impulse to begin photographing The Ramble emerge?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Around 1968, I began a project called Open Space in the Inner City, where you could make parks in different neglected areas of the city, like along the waterfront and old roadways and trails. And of course, I did a lot of work in Central Park, and I happened to live not too far away, at 72nd Street and Riverside Drive, so it was a 10-minute walk. I had been using The Ramble for my own private cruising grounds in a way over the years. One day I just thought it would make an interesting little sociological study on its own. I brought the camera, and some of the photographs of people just walking around were taken a little surreptitiously. But quite often, I\u2019d go up to people and ask them if I could photograph them.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: And what would their reactions be?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Oh, of course some people didn\u2019t want to be part of the project, but other people were fine with it and we\u2019d have a little conversation. My work has always been a little bit of improvised, stage-directed imagery, especially in portraits, so it\u2019s kind of a combination. I call it a sort of \u201cpoetic documentary.\u201d I took as the theme the late-winter light, with the bare trees creating a kind of labyrinth of synapses. I felt somehow it was an appropriate leitmotif for the series, so the images had all these kinds of film noir shadow areas in them.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Yeah, which is so stunning and evocative. At the time, were you considering these photographs just for yourself, as kind of a private collection? Or did you imagine that they would be shared at some point?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, at that time, there really was no audience or publications that would show gay photography. They were mostly for myself, but I had a sense that they were historically important. It turns out that it was one of the first documents of gay cruising at a very important fulcrum in time. So I think for your generation, they\u2019re an amazing revelation of a different world.<\/p>\n

\"Arthur<\/a><\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: I understand the park at the time in the late \u201960s was more derelict and overgrown than it is now. To what extent do you think that was part of the emergence of the park as a cruising space? Had it been, to your knowledge, a cruising space through the \u201950s or even earlier?<\/p>\n

TRESS: I think it\u2019s funny that even since the 1920s, The Ramble has had a reputation as being a gay cruising place. In the late \u201960s, New York was undergoing a kind of economic crisis. That\u2019s why everyone enjoyed living there\u2014it gave the city a rough edge. That part of the park was very overgrown and derelict. There were all kinds of trees falling down, but it was still very interesting and had a certain mood in itself.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: I\u2019d love to understand more about the stakes for these men at the time, being photographed in what was probably a known cruising space. You mentioned a number of men were comfortable with it. Would they have been comfortable being sort of openly gay men? How concerned might they have been about their image being associated with a gay cruising spot?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, as a photographer, you develop a certain rapport with your subjects. So I think I just made people feel comfortable with being photographed. In a way, the guys that I met were willing participants. They knew this was something that needed to be recorded.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Do you have a memory of the first time you encountered The Ramble?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, cruising has always been part of New York City life, in all parts of the city. When I was in high school, I\u2019d go down to 42nd Street and you could cruise down by the Christopher Street Pier and along Riverside Drive, by the Soldiers\u2019 and Sailors\u2019 Monument. There were different cruising areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: You grew up in Brooklyn, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n

TRESS: Yes.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Were you still living in Brooklyn at the time?<\/p>\n

TRESS: I was living in Brooklyn with my mother. My father lived at 76th Street and Riverside. So even in high school, when I was out walking the dog at night, I\u2019d try to pick up some man\u2014not too successfully. [Laughs] There was very little information about being gay in those years. One always had a sort of psychological ambivalence about being gay during that time. And I told my father that I was picking up men in the park.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: You told him?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Yes. And that maybe I needed some medical help, because\u2014<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: What did he say to that?<\/p>\n

TRESS: I went to see a psychiatrist, and of course he gave me the whole spiel about it being illegal\u2014you could get arrested, it was against nature, it was a mental disease kind of thing. So that made me feel even worse. But I think those feelings were identical to many of the emotions of the men I was photographing in the park when I did The Ramble series. So I think that my photographs are kind of a mirror\u2014a sympathetic mirror\u2014of myself. And I think the models and subjects that I photographed sensed that I had a compassionate understanding for their own struggles.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: And I understand that earlier in the \u201960s, you had traveled rather extensively as an ethnographic photographer, documenting rituals among the Maya in Mexico, the S\u00e1mi in Sweden, and the Dogon in West Africa. I\u2019m curious about the extent to which your history as an ethnographic photographer translated to your work in The Ramble.<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, I had been doing this ethnographic photography where I was very concerned with rituals and ceremonies and sites. A great deal of my photography has always been about finding contemporary versions of these worlds\u2014archetypical patterns. Even the work I did here in California in the mid-\u201990s, with skate parks and paintball fields, explored sites of masculinity. I think that\u2019s always been one of my fascinations\u2014almost a kind of critique of gay masculinity or just masculinity in general.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: I don\u2019t know if you saw in the news recently, but there has been a crackdown on gay male cruising at Penn Station. There\u2019s a few different locations, the Penn Station washrooms being one. And 20 men among those arrested were detained by ICE and now face extradition, so I\u2019m curious about the policing of cruising over the years. Obviously, cruising has always had its dangers, especially at night. It was interesting that the book notes that a few days before the Stonewall riots, there was a mob of about 20 men brandishing axes and chainsaws that chopped down a known cruising grove in Flushing Meadows. To what extent were the dangers of cruising from residents or from police? And did you ever encounter any of those dangers yourself?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, I\u2019m really not a night person, and I did feel that to go into Central Park at night during that time period was not a good idea. On a personal level, I had never seen any police arrests or things like that, but I could sense there was an atmosphere of fear and danger. But The Ramble was kind of like a little gay community. There really weren\u2019t that many places like that in 1969. There were the bars, the baths\u2014they were all controlled by the mafia and were very tense, obsessive places. But when you came to The Ramble, it was kind of open and free.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Would you recognize regulars or friends at The Ramble, or were they mostly always new encounters?<\/p>\n

TRESS: There were regulars, but I never really knew any of them personally. Gay men would walk their dogs there and meet their friends and travel around in little groups. So there were little cliques, even at The Ramble. I would say, \u201cOh, this is just high school,\u201d all the different hierarchies of young and old, masculine and fat. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: I was cruising in The Ramble myself on Labor Day, one of the final hot days of summer, and it was just packed. And as you said, there were all kinds of different men there\u2014some in cliques, some in groups, some alone. It felt obviously very primal and feral, but also very social, as you\u2019re saying. But now, in the age of apps, so many men hook up almost like they\u2019re ordering Uber Eats. [Laughs] There\u2019s less of an emphasis on place and chance encounters. And yet cruising does persist. I\u2019m just curious how you\u2019ve observed these changes over the years.<\/p>\n

TRESS: I was brought up Jewish, so even when I would be cruising in The Ramble, that probably was why I was never successful. My first question is, \u201cWhat do you want to do?\u201d [Laughs] But also, \u201cWhat do you do? Are you a doctor or a lawyer? Can I bring you home to see my mother?\u201d<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: [Laughs] Were you looking for love in The Ramble?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Yeah, I was looking for relationships. I always felt that if you like someone, you\u2019d really want to do it again. But of course, it was really the wrong place. [Laughs] And then what happened after Stonewall, particularly, was the evolution of gay institutions where men could meet each other not in a bar, not cruising, but through the Front Runners, gay hiking clubs, the Firehouse gay dances, Columbia student clubs, and gay clubs. I think gay men created this whole set of new institutions where they could meet each other in a more serious and not necessarily sexual way. Actually, in the \u201970s and \u201980s, there were also men\u2019s therapy groups, because guys did not know how to go on a date. They had no social skills and they didn\u2019t know how to talk to each other. I went to a couple where you\u2019d practice and one of the rules was, \u201cYou don\u2019t have sex on your first date,\u201d because you kind of blow the tension in a way and you don\u2019t get to see if you\u2019re compatible with the person. So I\u2019d say there was an evolution from just raw cruising, which didn\u2019t fit my personality. I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s superior to someone who just loves the sexual excitement and energy of, as you say, chance encounters and multiple orgasms. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: All of these images are, of course, taken before AIDS. I\u2019m curious about what your observation or your lived experience was of cruising in The Ramble at the onset of AIDS, and how that shifted the dynamics within cruising sites in the city?<\/p>\n

TRESS: I sort of came out as a gay photographer when I began working for different gay magazines like Mandate and Honcho. I was a staff photographer, because I loved doing erotic fantasies. This is pre-AIDS, so there was a lot of sexual activity all along the New York City piers, particularly. But on a personal level, I had a kind of boyfriend who was an artist for about 10 years. So during the AIDS crisis, I was not personally involved in the cruising scene except as a photographer. I was photographing it from a distance. So I would imagine that the cruising had cooled down and that people were not participating in that kind of accidental form of encounters.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: At what point did you begin to imagine these photographs for the public and want to share them?\u00a0<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, around 2022, I began working with Jim Ganz at the Getty Museum, and he was really interested in my work of the late \u201960s and early \u201970s. I did an exhibit called Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows. I was showing him my pictures of the open spaces and the park and he said, \u201cWell, what are these, Arthur? These are amazing.\u201d And I said,\u201d Well, I shot for a couple of months in The Ramble.\u201d I think all photographers have these little hidden, forgotten chapters in our work that aren\u2019t seen. So I began looking more closely at what was there. I was doing some book proposals to an English publisher and he thought that this would be a very interesting volume to publish. And then we really looked at it more closely and I said, \u201cWell, all of these are amazing\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: That\u2019s beautiful. Something that you say in the book which I found really beautiful was that the act of cruising had much in common with photography. You say, \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing photography, there\u2019s a lot of waiting around for the moment\u2014like one of those white egrets standing in a pond waiting to get the fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

TRESS: [Laughs] That\u2019s funny.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: How much of your process was about waiting around, waiting for something to occur? And how much was it about you being proactive and staging something?<\/p>\n

TRESS: In cruising, you\u2019re doing a kind of endless walking around. You\u2019re working a lot with your eyes, looking this way and that way, and then waiting around, a lot of patience. So I think that was always kind of my style of photography. I call them \u201cwalkabouts.\u201d I\u2019m in a semi-trance state, and then I suddenly sort of pounce on something. I could almost intuitively identify people who would be sympathetic to me, or people who had such a cold atmosphere about themselves that I couldn\u2019t go up to them. I\u2019m kind of a shy person, actually, so it was kind of a mixture of all those elements.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: And did your act of photography ever translate into sex? Was the camera an extension of your cruising?\u00a0<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, a little bit.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: An icebreaker? [Laughs]<\/p>\n

TRESS: It sort of gave me a reason. I was always amazed when I\u2019d look at other gay men\u2014how they could just go up to each other at a bar and say, \u201cHey, I\u2019m Joe. Can I buy you a drink?\u201d But somehow, it did give me a sort of alibi to go up to these guys. But down the line, it really never worked out, except in maybe one or two instances that I can think of. But it really, really wasn\u2019t the reason I was making the pictures. It was kind of an afterthought.<\/p>\n

I think my photos capture a lot of the loneliness and anxiety. And if another photographer came to photograph The Ramble and he had a different attitude towards life, he would photograph people smiling and holding their dogs or all that kind of thing. But I was just very tuned in, because it was a kind of social commentary on the paranoia, anxiety, loneliness, and frustration of gay men at that period. We really don\u2019t like that self-image of the wounded homosexual\u2014The Boys in the Band.\u00a0 But I think now what\u2019s going to make these pictures interesting to people is that we\u2019re ready to acknowledge that part of ourselves\u2014the way we were and still are, at least for a lot of people. So I think the best photos in the series capture that. If you look at the expression in certain people\u2019s eyes, you get that lack of self-esteem. And I photographed that in a very uncensored way. Plus, it was reflective of my own sense of who I was and not being comfortable with my own sexuality.<\/p>\n

\"Arthur<\/a><\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Well, there is something so profound and kind of aching about these photos. So many of these men are captured at this very tender moment in their youth and there\u2019s something kind of melancholy about knowing that many of these men are probably no longer alive. And there\u2019s a real poignancy to those images, I think, in part because of that.<\/p>\n

TRESS: Yes. And I know your work a little bit\u2014your recent play. I haven\u2019t seen it, but I hope it comes to San Francisco. But you also seem to be concerned with the different roles that people play. A play that made a big impression on me was The Balcony by Jean Genet.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Yeah, a masterwork.<\/p>\n

TRESS: And somehow, when you\u2019re photographing gay men, there are all these little sub-genres: the leather guys, the hippies, the clones, the bears. In The Ramble, you sort of have a mixing pot of all these types going by. So I was kind of aware on a social-political level how these different stereotypes that we embrace project a certain kind of image of ourselves.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: What kind of subcultures did you encounter in The Ramble? And kind of pursuant to that, you mentioned the ethnographic interests in rites and rituals. What were some of the cruising codes that were in play at the time?<\/p>\n

TRESS: The hanky code didn\u2019t really come into being until the mid-\u201970s, so it was mostly some guys who would dress very straight-looking\u2014and of course they were kind of the top, desirable types. And then you\u2019d get older men who dressed a little bit more flamboyantly. But almost everybody was wearing very tight jeans or leather pants. There was a lot of phallic signaling\u2014like rock stars with big crotches. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: How would they signal?\u00a0<\/p>\n

TRESS: It was just the way people would stand. It was a body language of just standing in a very tense way, or just letting you know that they were there for sex.<\/p>\n

\"Arthur<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: Would they just have sex there in the open? Or would they go somewhere kind of more secluded and private?<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, it was quite amazing, but there were secret areas of The Ramble that were very overgrown. There were actually even little caves and hidden outcroppings that you could kind of go off to. But I think there was as much rejection, so you kind of wonder if the people were just there just for the act of cruising and really weren\u2019t that interested in sex as much as displaying themselves and parading around.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: In many ways, little has changed. That all sounds very familiar. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, that\u2019s what people say. I don\u2019t have a smartphone, but they say it\u2019s the same thing that goes on. Also, it\u2019s very traumatic and psychologically disturbing\u2014these online sites for people. Cruising could be something that diminished your self-esteem, even though it was gays\u2019 defining and owning a space, which was revolutionary in a way.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: But it could also undermine one\u2019s self-confidence. You could come home from a night of cruising and feel really shitty about yourself.<\/p>\n

TRESS: That\u2019s right. I often wish I had all the hours back that I spent hanging around in the back rooms. But occasionally, you would meet someone wonderful in the corner of a bar, a quiet person. But bars were so full of loud noise and cigarette smoke. I don\u2019t smoke, so to hang out in a place like The Ramble was kind of nice.<\/p>\n

TANNAHILL: That\u2019s beautiful. I really appreciate your candor, Arthur, and the clarity of your answers. I\u2019d been so looking forward to our conversation and this was so edifying. And congratulations again, Arthur. It\u2019s such a beautiful work and I hope it finds a wide audience.<\/p>\n

TRESS: Well, thank you, Jordan. Bye-bye.<\/p>\n

\"Arthur<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All photos by Arthur Tress. In the 1960s, when the photographer Arthur Tress began photographing The Ramble, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[15650,69724,365,362,363,364,69725,366,18,117,19,17,69726,432,69727],"class_list":{"0":"post-112609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-aids","9":"tag-arthur-tress","10":"tag-arts","11":"tag-arts-and-design","12":"tag-artsanddesign","13":"tag-artsdesign","14":"tag-cruising","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-entertainment","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jordan-tannahill","21":"tag-photography","22":"tag-the-ramble"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}