Music industry legend and photographer Michael Alago signs POLAROID ENCOUNTERS – his love letter to Analog Lust and Masculinity

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Polaroid Encounters: 1998–2009 is the fourth monograph published by music industry legend and photographer Michael Alago. Like his previous books, Rough Gods, Brutal Truth, and Beautiful Imperfections, Polaroid Encounters is a sexy, self-contained shrine to macho masculinity in all its flexing, flirting, full-frontal glory.

Join Michael at the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division as he signs copies of Polaroid Encounters to raise funds and awareness for The Bureau – Manhattan’s last queer bookstore.

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Polaroid Encounters is a love letter to analog lust. As pioneering author, editor, and former lover of Robert Mapplethorpe, Jack Fritscher puts it in the book’s introduction: “The two hundred Polaroid images pop like poppers because the instant gratification of his page-turning collection creates an old-school nostalgia for cruising gyms the way guys hunted before dating apps.”

Starkly framed across 142 pages are candid and posed Polaroids shot in New York, Dallas, New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco between 1998 and 2009 — the same year gay porn magazine Mandate ceased publication amid the rise of the internet. Subjects include tricks, friends, models, bodybuilders, tattooed roughnecks, and ex-con boyfriends in various settings and stages of undress and arousal. Adding to the tantalizingly intimate vibe, many were shot in Alago’s own Chelsea apartment.