Home Boys

A habitual presence among the downtown crowd, art photographer David Armstrong has captured intimate moments in the lives of hundreds of young men (and a few women)—models, friends, and lovers—over the span of his more than three-decade career. Now, a new book, David Armstrong: 615 Jefferson Avenue (Damiani), celebrates the 57-year-old artist’s expansive catalog of languidly voyeuristic and subtly erotic photo documentation. The book is a seductive essay in early aughts realism through 120 color and black-and-white portraits of teenage boys and twentysomethings taken mostly in Armstrong’s enchanted Bed-Stuy brownstone. Also forthcoming is another Armstrong monograph full of intimacy and invention: Night & Day (Morel Books), a collection of archival images—including smoke-tinged snapshots of waifish boys sprawled on couches and post-party nudes of girls in bathtubs—from Armstrong’s earlier days in carefree New York bohemia.