"In the Meat Rack”, in collaboration with trans filmmaker Parker Sargent, is his first incursion in the documentary world as a director.
In the spring of 2020, the Basque-American photographer released his first book, "koitz Gay Fire Island” (www.gaypinkbook.com) that covers 14 years of queer life in the two mostly queer communities of Fire Island, NY: the Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove. That year, curator Elizabeth Avedon included his very successful book as one of the best photography books of 2020.
According to curator Nicholas Davis, "koitz continues in a distinguished line of tradition-challenging Fire Islanders like visual artists Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret Hoening, who, in their collaborative work under the name PaJaMa, also explored the beauty of the human figure in the stark, almost austere landscape of sea, sky and sand. koitz is a worthy successor.”
In 2015, koitz received the Founders Cultural Award, which sponsors underrepresented artists from diverse communities, to produce the exhibition Fire Island: Fun in the Sun, at the Verle Annis Gallery, on the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles. A year later, in the summer of 2016, a selection of photographs of Fire Island were shown at the Cherry Grove Community House and Theater in an exhibition organized by the Arts Project of Cherry Grove. Again, and following the publication of his book, another exhibit took place at the Community House in the summer of 2021.
koitz has also published two books of postcards of a series titled “Pretty Gay”. He is currently working on another photo book that will depict overtly sexual images of male naked bodies.
koitz was also the news correspondent in the United States of the Basque public radio station “Radio Euskadi” for over 13 years, and has worked in the post-production side for the company Paramount Global in New York for many years. Along with Parker Sargent, he has also directed the documentary “In the Meat Rack”.
Currently, koitz also co-produces the podcast “What is Queer” (www.whatisqueerpodcast.com) with host and producer Parker Sargent.
If you're an artist that would like to partner with the Cherry Grove Archives Collection to make your work part of our Archival presentations, please email our Chair Person Troy Files (contact@cgarchives.org).