This photograph of two men casually intertwined and tenderly embracing typifies the pictures Doug Ishcar made of gay life throughout the 1980s in Chicago. Like many of Ischar’s pictures, this one was made at Belmont Rocks, a stretch of limestone blocks on the lakefront frequented by the gay community. The rocks served as a safe space to gather, picnic, sunbath, and hook up, and Ischar’s depictions capture the uninhibited intimacy and relaxed confidence of his subjects. Joyous and revelatory, these pictures have since become a source of memorialization and solidarity for a community devasted by the AIDS epidemic.