Stanley Stellar was on Canal Street one Sunday morning in 1976 when a young man with a killer body passed by. Like many New York street photographers, Stellar is curious, bordering on nosy, and he can, when necessary, be a whiz at masking flirtation as flattery to put straight guys at ease.
Stellar convinced the man to lift his T-shirt for a photo, and in return Stellar got an eyeful of chest and colorful bird tattoos, a picture Stellar later named “I Got Birds Too.”
The man’s shirt went back on and a lightbulb went off.
“I walked away from this and went, oh, this is who I am,’” Stellar, 79, said in a recent interview at his TriBeCa apartment.
That chance encounter was an awakening that helped fuel Stellar’s decades-long drive to take pictures of unapologetic, maverick gayness as much as he can fit into a day. He’s still at it, as his nearly 40,000 Instagram followers can testify.
To be clear, Stellar is gay. Spare him “queer.”
“I don’t like how gay has been marginalized and dismissed,” he said. “At this point in my life, I’m not going to go, Oh yeah, I’ve always been a queer artist.’ No.”