Sex, Death and Polaroids
The New York Times
Clifton Mooney came to New York to be a Covid nurse. After hours, he embraced life by taking intimate pictures of his friends.
It was a Hot Vax June quickly becoming a Delta Variant July soon to mutate into whatever August was (who can recall at this point?), and there was Clifton Mooney, a 1976 Polaroid SX-70 camera dangling on a nylon strap from his neck — the only part of his body, except his face, that isn’t heavily tattooed — clutching a beer, as hazy and bright as the afternoon sun blazing down onto the shirtless, gay New York City men around him.
Maybe he was at 3 Dollar Bill in East Williamsburg, with its pop D.J.s and massive parking lot, home to all sorts of alfresco shenanigans, or out for his maiden voyage to Fire Island Pines, the historically artistic queer beach community off the coast of central Long Island. It’s impossible to say, since Mr. Mooney’s strange, arresting images rarely reveal his subjects’ identity or location.
In one Polaroid, a man skinny-dips facedown across a seemingly infinite cerulean pool. Others show a pale butt in repose against the ocean, or a disembodied tangle of toned arms and hairy legs on the sand — all flesh but for their moppy haircuts and colorful Speedos.
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