The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) is proud to debut a new project by Sarah Baley. With works in major museums and private collections, Baley is a stellar art photographer best known for her breakout series Bois, an exploration at an early moment of the continually evolving story of contemporary gender queer culture. At the time, “Boi and Bois” were considered fluid terms used amongst the contemporary queer community as a response to, and rejection of, labels that defined social normalcy, heterocentrism and heteronormativity. Her latest series is a developing commentary on The Model Wife, a book by photographer/author Arthur Ollman, published in 1999. This book, and an accompanying exhibition which followed two years later, surveyed nine male photographers including Lee Friedlander, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, working in the 20th century, who had used their wives as models.

Baley reimagines The Model Wife as it would look today, from her perspective as a Femme/LGBTQI+ artist. With this exhibition the artist has generously given us a window into her practice. Baley tells us, “This series is a work in progress. I am sharing my process on the walls of the gallery as I would in the privacy of my own studio while it is still evolving, raw and in transformation, in honor of the LGBTQIA+ Community and femme identifying people.”

50% of the proceeds from sales will be donated to the Ali Forney Center and Planned Parenthood divided equally.

The Model Wife will be on view through August 28th in the upstairs gallery at BWAC. The galleries occupy two floors of the massive Civil War‐era Beard and Robinson Stores warehouse at 481 Van Brunt Street on the Red Hook waterfront in Brooklyn, NY.

BWAC is open to the public Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 6pm and by appointment weekdays 718-596-2506.

Opening July 29th 6-8pm. On View July 30th-August 28th, 2022