Celebrating Fire Island’s fabled “Invasion of the Pines”

Photographer Phillip Gutman’s recent exhibition pays homage to an important chapter of LGBTQ history with a sumptuous array of hand printed scenes.

Decades before Stonewall, Fire Island was an oasis of queer culture, offering seaside escape for artists, writers, performers, and stars from the everyday grind of New York life. At a time when homosexuality and gender variance were criminalised and pathologised, the towns of Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines provided safety and sanctuary to the LGBTQ community.

But within this secluded haven, bigotry festered in the shadows. On a summer evening in 1976, Cherry Grove resident Teri Warren arrived at the Blue Whale Restaurant in the Pines, donning her finest drag. The restaurant refused to serve her, citing her choice of dress, an act of discrimination that remained legal under New York’s Masquerade Laws.

Originally codified in 1845 to punish local farmers for dressing as Native Americans before attacking tax collectors, police used these laws to persecute trans and drag folks. While policing practices changed after Stonewall, the discrimination persevered — requiring the community take matters into their own hands.

On July 4, 1976 — the Bicentennial of the United States — a flock of Cherry Grove residents done up in their best drag embarked on a boat ride sailing west along the Great South Bay and heading straight for the Fire Island Pines Harbor. The boat docked and the queens descended upon the Pines, standing in solidarity with their sisters and letting it be known such discrimination would never be allowed again.

Thomas Hansen, better known as Panzi, blessed the harbor and in that moment of triumph a new tradition was born: Invasion of the Pines. Over the past half century, the Invasion has become a true Independence Day, Fire Island style, inspiring generations to bear the mantle of resistance with joy and campy insouciance.

With the recent exhibition, Invasion of the Pines, photographer Phillip Gutman pays homage to this chapter of LGBTQ history with a sumptuous array of hand printed scenes from the annual affair made in 2017 and 2018.

Hailing from Melbourne, Florida, Gutman arrived in New York in 2005 to study photography, but it wasn’t until 2015 that he first set foot on Fire Island. “My dear friend called me on a Saturday and asked me to come with him the following day to a beach party; he essentially made the outing mandatory,” Gutman says. “I went, and I actually met my husband that Sunday at that beach party. From that point I spent quite a lot of time on the island.”

With destiny on his side, Gutman photographed the pomp and pageantry of the Invasion with delicious aplomb, crafting scenes of righteous protest that are as empowering today as they were in 1976.

Traveling home to Florida, Gutman sees the erosion of civil rights in real time, and understands the artist’s role in fostering community. “Art isn’t something you make just for yourself,” he says. “It’s also for someone else who sees it and it starts their imagination of where their life might take them.”