Amos Badertscher, photographer of Baltimore street life, dies at 86

Amos Badertscher, a renowned American photographer known for his moving portraits of Baltimore's marginalized communities, has died at 86, as announced by CLAMP gallery in New York. Born in 1936, he devoted his life to documenting Baltimore through thousands of black-and-white photographs featuring a diverse array of subjects, such as pedestrians, nightclub goers, AIDS patients, strippers, drug users, drag queens, and hustlers. He developed and printed these images himself, often adding personal stories about his subjects directly onto the prints. This September, the University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus will host a retrospective called 'Lost Boys: Amos Badertscher's Baltimore.' Queer-art historian Jonathan David Katz praised Badertscher, comparing the release of his archive to the discovery of King Tut's tomb.