Copyright Meryl Meisler / Courtesy of Steven Kasher
Copyright Meryl Meisler / Courtesy of Steven Kasher
In July 1978, Donna Summer released Last Dance, the final word on the dancefloor – the last record spun at the club before the lights come on. American photographer Meryl Meisler could not have known then just how apt that track would be when it released during her last summer at The Survivor, a cottage on Fire Island.
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Just one year earlier, Meisler had made her entrée to the Fire Island social scene, after meeting a hairstylist named Barnett through a friend of a friend she knew from her nights at Studio 54. Barnett had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and took a shine to Meisler. He extended an open invitation to his home, and for two seasons Meisler made her way to heart of Cherry Grove, accompanied by her childhood friend Judi Jupiter.
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During those first years in between the Summer of Love and the advent of AIDS, New York was a carefree candyland, equal parts innocence and decadence. Camera in hand, Meisler captured a forgotten slice of New York LGBTQ history in these photographs, some of which appear in her books A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick and Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre Publishing). Meisler looks back at this Edenic idyll 40 years on.
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Copyright Meryl Meisler / Courtesy of Steven Kasher
Copyright Meryl Meisler / Courtesy of Steven Kasher