Pictures of the week: Marginal Waters, by Doug Ischar

In the summer of 1985, Doug Ischar was a driven man in his mid-30s. A year earlier, he had given up a career as an orchestral cellist to study photography. His mission was to document gay men in public spaces.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

Gay photography, at the time, was mostly relegated to static studio portraits by the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe, rather than documentary work of men going about their lives. Ischar, gay himself, wanted to redress this.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

The mid-80s was the height of the Aids crisis, and an open way of life among the gay community was under threat. Ischar’s summer-long study of men relaxing on the shores of Lake Michigan “felt like a conservation project – I did it while there was still time”.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

He turned up at the same “beach” – really a rocky outcrop – every day with his camera and shot these young men as they sunbathed, listened to Walkmans, drank beer and swam.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

His shots linger over thighs, necks, backs, buttocks and stomachs, rather than faces. You can almost feel the heat coming off the rocks.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

Ischar sometimes worried he was invading their privacy, “but I felt that recording this world was worth that risk”. He was both part of, and apart from, the gay beach social scene. “I was working, so I was a bit of a lone wolf,” he says. “My social life was in the bars of Chicago.”→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

There was little interest in this series of photographs at the time, he recalls.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

But today, since introducing them to a new audience for an exhibition in Toronto, he has been told how contemporary they feel – provided you overlook the occasional anachronistic haircut or personal stereo.→ Photograph: Doug Ischar

“You sometimes have to wait for the right moment. In my case, quite a long time.”

May 3 to June 15 2013 — DOUG ISCHAR: Undertow. Co-presented by Vtape and Gallery 44. gallery44.org/exhibitions

A Featured exhibition of the 2013 CONTACT Photography Festival Photograph: Doug Ischar