Leonard Fink

Fink was "well known in the gay scene of the West Village of the early 1980s" He "was a colorful and ubiquitous character in the Village and at Pride parades, usually appearing on rollerskates in short cut-offs, and a tight t-shirt with cameras always around his neck. He sometimes arrived on a bicycle or a motorcycle."

His first photographs date from 1954, of friends, holidays in Europe, and scenes in New York City. "His photographs of gay life begin with groups of gay men photographed in Greenwich Village in 1967" and he continued to focus on his own LGBT culture in New York City throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He photographed many of the annual Pride Marches beginning with the first in 1970—the Christopher Street Liberation Day march; the West Village's gay bar culture, especially on West Street; and in particular the abandoned West Side Hudson River piers, such as Christopher Street Pier. The rundown piers served as a space for gay men to interact and Fink photographed the cruising and sexual encounters, including his own. He made both candid photographs as well as those where his subjects knew they were being photographed. Elsewhere too, he often made self-portraits.

His complete photographic archive, consisting of work from 1954 to 1992, is held in the archive of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City.

Fink was self-taught in photography, using a 35 mm camera and a home-made darkroom in his small apartment on West 92nd street.

Leonard Fink (1930–1992) was an American photographer who documented his own LGBT culture in New York City from 1967 to 1992. He photographed the annual Pride Marches beginning with the first in 1970; the West Village's gay bar culture; and in particular the abandoned West Side piers where men cruised and had sexual encounters.

Fink was born in New York City in 1930 and grew up on the West Side of Manhattan. He was raised an Orthodox Jew but as an adult he was non-observant. His father and older brother were physicians. Fink gained an undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University, then served in the army in the early 1950s. Later he gained a law degree from New York Law School.