For over 40 years, Amos Badertscher (1936-2023) documented the grittier side of Baltimore, a unique American city known for its working-class edge and extensive hustler and gay culture.
Shooting photographs in bars and back alleys, cruising corners, under highways and abandoned buildings, as well as his own home and studio, Amos sought to capture, in an inescapable style, what he couldn’t avoid. He later said, “It seemed like almost the whole damned city was a meat rack.”
After his first same-sex encounter, he discovered the power of the camera, black and white photography, and its relation to his sexual interest. He began to take his first photographs in the mid-1960s with a small Polaroid camera he purchased for $25.
By the early 1970s, he had settled into his apartment and had begun to think about being a black-and-white photographic documentarian. He wrote stories about his subjects on the margins of his prints.
In his mid-thirties, he inherited a small sum and no longer had to work. This allowed him to make photographs full-time. At night, often drinking heavily, he cruised the meat racks and bars, developing negatives and printing images during the day.
In 2005, at age 70, he stopped drinking and making new images. His time for cruising the meat racks and gay bars he had ended. However, he was not done with his work. For nearly sixteen years more, he revisited his stories and updated them, often with additional research and informed reflection. With the tireless and loving assistance of his life partner, Bill Badertscher, a model he met in 1985, Amos rewrote the stories of his subjects in longhand and then created new versions on his computer. At this time, Amos began to work with Julien S. Davis to make new digital prints of images he previously had created as gelatin silver prints.
A storyteller by nature and a writer by training, Amos compassionately puts forth individuals others may care to judge. But he brought the figures in his world to life without a scintilla of moral judgment. In his writings, he reflects the reservations and prejudices expected of someone who grew up in a privileged suburban life in the mid-20th century. Was he challenged by reckoning with his sexual desires in a world that villainized those who had a same-sex attraction? Did he develop a transactional element in his sexual encounters? Of course. But in his photos, Amos asked us to look at those around him (and us) as people and individuals without second-guessing their motivation or injecting morality-inspired ideology.
Amos is presented by Brian Clamp at CLAMP/NYC.