Darren Jones: Wraith (self portrait as a Ghost), 2012, digital print, variable dimensions

Fire Island Pines Beach is a place of melancholy solitude, most keenly experienced outside of the summer season, when the human element is absent. A place of pilgrimage during the holocaust of the AIDS crisis, it retains an atmosphere of nostalgia and lost beauty. Many men were deeply connected to this remote spot; many spent their final days here during those years. At quiet times, in deepest fall, or late winter, there remains a palpable sense of history and passing; a feeling of kinship with those who went before and of profound spiritual presence.