In Katsu Naito’s photograph “Dominique in Heaven” (1991), a woman with a blunt bob stands pigeon-toed in front of a brick wall. Her sparkly garment is flung up over her stomach, revealing a slice of underwear, the wind blows pieces of her hair across her face and her mouth is open in an expression of surprise — has she just dropped something precious or remembered a sordid detail? The work’s title raises other questions: Who is Dominique, and what makes this nondescript stretch of sidewalk heaven? The image is among those that most held my attention at “Katsu Naito: West Side Rendezvous,” which opened at New York Life Gallery in Chinatown last week and consists of 27 black-and-white photographs of sex workers in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in the 1990s.
As a photographer myself, I was most familiar, before seeing the show, with Naito’s subdued black-and-white images of ’90s Harlem, which in 2017 were collected into a small but mighty monograph, “Once in Harlem.” Looking at these pictures, which the artist took a few years after arriving in the United States from Maebashi, Japan, I sensed that he and I shared influences, namely August Sander’s confrontational yet elegant environmental portraits of his fellow Germans and the photographs of Richard Avedon, who sought to strip away artifice and liked to set his subjects against a stark backdrop. But before Naito — now 62 and living back in Japan as of last year — made that work, he trained his camera on another New York community.
One day, wandering the city with his camera, he stumbled upon the Meatpacking District after hours, when the butchers had gone home and the air stank of blood and raw meat. There, on corners, in decrepit alleyways and boldly atop parked police cars, were women just beginning their shift. Just as he would do in Harlem, Naito embedded himself in the world of his subjects, many of whom were queer and trans, and eventually earned their trust. He’d bring them coffee and hand warmers during the colder months, crack jokes with them and listen to their stories long into the night. He photographed many of them over and over and remains in touch with one recurring subject, Porsche Jones, to this day.
These images were made in the midst of the AIDS and crack epidemics, and their subjects, ignored or maligned by mainstream society, were particularly vulnerable to both. And yet Naito and those he photographed left room for exuberance and camp. In some of the pictures, women pose like pinups or pouty cover girls, and in all of them they seem self-possessed. The new exhibition, which was curated by Joseph Akel, coincides with the publication of a book of these portraits, “West Side Rendezvous” (2026), which will allow them to be seen by a larger audience. “Many people are unaware that the people I photographed even existed,” Naito tells me when we speak on a video call, emphasizing how this archive commemorates a lesser-known part of New York’s history — and “preserves the fact that these women were there, living their lives on those streets.”
How did it feel to revisit this work decades later, and why do you think it’s important now?
“West Side Rendezvous” and my Harlem series have always been deeply important to me. Revisiting these photographs brings back memories of who I was at that time. And now, more than 30 years later, I can casually talk on the phone about those days with Porsche, whom I saw and photographed repeatedly back then. Considering the difficult circumstances she lived through, and the harsh realities faced by many transgender women at the time, the fact that she is still here means a great deal to me.
“West Side Rendezvous” was first published as a book in 2011 by an independent publisher in London. The 500 copies sold out quickly. Over the years, I increasingly felt that this work needed to be published again. This new book and exhibition are a way of remembering this time period and celebrating Porsche and the other survivors. They’re an important part of New York’s history.
What fascinated you about these subjects?
They were themselves, and I found beauty in their desire to enjoy themselves. I wanted to capture some of that intangible feeling and energy on film. I couldn’t believe how they were risking their lives for a little money — I’d lost my friend to AIDS, and they were so exposed to it — yet they were also full of their lives.
It wasn’t easy for me to blend into the community, and it was especially difficult to do so in Harlem, where it took almost two years for them to accept me.
Why do you think that was?
[Many of the residents] weren’t used to seeing someone of my ethnicity there, especially someone with a camera. They might’ve thought that I was an undercover cop or something. And so I didn’t want to take pictures right away; I wanted them to accept me first. I started hanging out at a motorcycle bar called the Black Unicorn Cycle Club. I’d been walking in the area one day when I saw a Black man polishing his Harley-Davidson. When the iron bar door behind him opened, I heard soul music coming from inside. I loved Black music. We started talking and he invited me in. I was welcomed there. I was in my 20s, and most of the folks were in their 30s and 40s. There were men and women, a dance floor and two pool tables.
When I talked to people in the neighborhood, they’d ask, “Why are you living in Harlem? Where are you from?” Many of them thought I was wealthy because I was from Japan. I’d answer that I wanted to understand Harlem and take pictures of the community. Gradually, I got more comfortable with them and they got more comfortable with me.
Why did you want to photograph this predominately Black neighborhood? What were you curious about?
Harlem was always a place I wanted to visit. There was a Japanese journalist, Ruiko Yoshida, who’d lived there in the 1960s. In ’72, she published a book about the neighborhood, “Black Is Beautiful.” I read it when I was 17 or 18, and it stayed in my head.
One day, I decided to walk to Harlem with a backpack, my 35-millimeter camera and some film. There were elderly men sitting in chairs by the street and talking. I approached a few of them and they seemed sweet, and right then I decided that I wanted to take pictures of Harlem. So the next year I moved there.
I’m thinking about an image in the show, “Toni in an Abandoned Building on 13th Street” (1992). This person is standing fully nude on a pillar in the middle of what looks like a dilapidated structure. Tell me about the making of this picture.
I was shooting Toni on the street, and then we walked past an abandoned building. I said, “Toni, let’s go check it out.” It was February and 20-something degrees outside. He gets totally naked and I see a pillar. I ask him to go stand over there and he’s like, “Yeah, why not?” I was using a Pentax 6 by 7. That was the last frame on the roll, and it was beautifully captured. He was freezing to death, which is why he’s holding his body like this [with his arms crossed in front of his chest] and looking up, like, “Help me, I’m so [expletive] cold.”
That’s funny because I don’t actually read coldness in the image at all. I read camp and glamour. How did you develop your style?
I think it has to do with how I approach the subject. I wouldn’t take a picture unless they were comfortable with me and my camera. Then we’d start talking and I’d notice, “Oh, they’re being themselves.” They weren’t too self-conscious or putting on a face or trying to look good. As a photographer, you always notice when a person opens up their heart. So I’m always trying to be open too. I’m seeing them, but I’m also being seen by them.
What photographers inspired you the most when you were working on your Harlem series and “West Side Rendezvous?”
I’m self-taught, but I was very influenced by August Sander, whose work I discovered on my 19th birthday at a Strand bookstall on Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. As well as Richard Avedon and his project “In The American West” (1979-84) which I discovered the next year at a shop called A Photographer’s Place in SoHo. But my biggest inspiration was Diane Arbus. I used to look at her photographs almost every night before bed. The people she photographed were certainly compelling, but I think what drew me in most was an indescribable sense of time and space that had clearly been shared between the photographer and the subject.
What are you working on right now?
I live in a small town with about 33,000 people. Japan is losing its population, so the country is relying on lots of foreigners to help meet its labor needs. A lot of people from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and India. We aren’t used to having foreigners live here, and I started photographing them in the hopes that it would encourage those who are closed-minded to look a little more deeply at those who’ve come from elsewhere.
Most of the people I’m photographing are in their teens and 20s and came to Maebashi to attend a Japanese-language school. After returning to Japan in 2025, I started visiting the school two or three times a week, sometimes attending classes alongside them. I carried a small camera and began taking candid photographs during breaks. Later, I made composed portraits.
I see something of my younger self in these students — I remember when I first arrived in the United States. When making their portraits, I ask the students to turn their attention inward but look into the lens, almost as though they’re gazing into the distance. What interests me is the moment when the viewer’s gaze meets that of the person in the photograph.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
