Must-See: David Armstrong’s Polished Portraits

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition

Thousands of David Armstrong’s negatives, photographs and contact prints were deteriorating in a Massachusetts barn, until they were found by his friend and fellow artist Wade Guyton after Armstrong’s death in 2014. What emerges from this time capsule – a selection from which is presented at LUMA Arles – is a portrait of the photographer’s friends and lovers, who lived queer, creative lives in New York City both before and through the AIDS crisis. More than 80 vintage gelatin silver prints hang in the gallery, while four tables display dozens of medium-format black and white contact prints. Like intimate storyboards, these follow the subjects of the wall-mounted portraits in the minutes before and after the chosen shot. In a separate room, a rotating series of colour images from 1979 (originally published in Night and Day in 2012) are presented digitally across six screens.

First shown at Kunsthalle Zürich in 2024 and brought to LUMA by curator Matthieu Humery, the exhibition follows a nine-year posthumous process of organizing Armstrong’s archive – including a call-out on Instagram to help identify some of the sitters. These are performers, artists, writers, actors, poets, musicians, fashion designers and AIDS activists – among them close friends Bruce Balboni and Suzanne Fletcher, hairstylist Mary Cruz, muse Joey Gabriel and actress Cookie Mueller, to name just a few. Whether at the beach, at parties or alone in their apartments, many look straight at the camera – especially in solo portraits – and the images follow a balanced, triangular composition, a nod to Armstrong’s early training as a painter.

In Stephen at Home, New York City (1983), artist and East Village drag performer Stephen Tashjian (aka Tabboo!) poses nude, draped in a sheet of white linen. In Kevin at St Luke’s Place, New York City (1977), Armstrong’s boyfriend at the time, Kevin McPhee, gazes at the camera in dramatic chiaroscuro. While many of his contemporaries favoured a spontaneous approach to capturing bohemian life, Armstrong cultivated a more traditional visual language, crafting bijou portraits of the so-called outsiders who made up his community, contrasting polished portraiture with the intensity of his subjects’ gazes.

‘David Armstrong’ is on view at LUMA Arles

^{Main image: ‘David Armstrong’, 2025, exhibition view. Courtesy: LUMA Arles and the Estate of David Armstrong; photograph: © Victor&Simon –Grégoire d’Ablon}